


Nowhere Ville

by SoulSurvivor_36



Category: Notting Hill (1999), Supernatural RPF
Genre: Cheese, F/M, Fluff, Romance, Sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-30
Updated: 2017-07-30
Packaged: 2018-12-09 00:08:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 40,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11657520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoulSurvivor_36/pseuds/SoulSurvivor_36
Summary: Alexa Larsen was just an ordinary, down-to-earth twenty-seven-year-old who lived in a small town, going about the business of her simple life and trying to make ends meet.  Until the day he walked into the store where she worked pulling her into the emotional roller coaster ride of her life.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So, I was watching Notting Hill (with Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant) a couple months back, and I felt the story could use a bit of an upgrade.
> 
> I set this from summer 2007 to spring 2008 so between season 2 and through season 3 of Supernatural.
> 
> It's cheesy and sweet, and everything you want from a romantic almost comedy, and I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.
> 
> Cheers!

People often compare love to a lightning strike: beautiful, terrifying and completely devastating.  Alexa Larsen was a practical woman who didn’t believe in love at first sight.  In fact, if experience had taught her anything, it was that one had to be very careful with their heart and with whom they chose to share it, because it can so easily be cracked and crushed if one wasn’t careful.  And so, she was utterly unprepared when, that quiet Tuesday morning, lightning struck out of the blue.

Lex lived in a neighbourhood desperately clinging to its rustic identity as the City slowly overtook it on all sides.  It consisted of one long street that ran east to west across the whole City, seamlessly blending into the East End on one side, and blocked off from the West End’s hospital and growing urban high rises by a sprawling park called “The Oasis.”  Whereas the rest of the City was a jungle of glass and metal skyscrapers and pavement, the park had sprawling lawns and thickly canopied trees and a quiet man made pond with burbling streams that moved through the area like someone had dropped ink on a page and blown it around with a straw.  The park was like a blanket of nature right through the main artery of the City, denying traffic access to cars, forcing them through an outrageous maze of one-ways, so pedestrians and cyclists could roam freely and safely in their quiet refuge from the busy hubbub of city life.

On this side of the park, started the stretch of road that time forgot, lined on one side with ancient two- or three-story townhouses and on the other, with old apartment buildings slowly falling into disrepair.  The whole thing was lined with trees as old as the oldest buildings, tough as nails and twisted into glorious monuments to nature’s endurance through the steepest odds.  The road was narrow and broken in this section of the City and turned into a one-way by a city-wide cycle path that was better maintained than the road itself in many places.  The crumbling red-brick townhouses from the turn of the last century with their overflowing gardens and giant maples and oaks through whose canopy you could glimpse the towering man made skyscrapers of the East End stretched ten blocks before slowly melting into the urban pavement.

The area was once a rich neighbourhood, attracting the elite to the still green area of the City, but twenty some odd years ago, they were hit by an economic slump, causing many of the residents to sell their prestigious homes and move on to houses that required less maintenance and less frustration.  Soon, the place was a ghost town, and the house values plummeted.  In an attempt to save the neighbourhood and its unique cachet, the City rezoned sections of it as commercial property with the caveat that whatever commerce moved into the old houses would conserve the overall aesthetics.

That was how Lex and her husband-to-be came to buy an old, Italianate, yellow-stone townhouse with a red-brick convenience store on the corner, a sandstone Blockbuster across the street and a smattering of cramped restaurants, shops, and nail and hair salons.  He left barely a year later, having met, in his words, “the most beautiful girl he had ever seen,” leaving boring, old Lex to fend for herself with a crippling mortgage.

And so, this was now home, these lost city blocks lovingly referred to by their residents as Nowhere Ville, with a strange specimen of the human race called Mackey, who was from somewhere overseas, and one day had walked into the house, answering a roommate wanted ad, and had simply never left.

⚡️

Lex’s slightly wavy brown hair bounced and fluttered in its ponytail, her face kissed and cooled by the gentle morning breeze as she jogged along the cycle path.  She slowed to a walk, checking her pulse as she came up to an old yellow-stone townhouse that looked the same as every other yellow-stone along the street.  The canopy from the trees along the road always made Nowhere feel cooler than where the unfiltered sunlight beat down on the City’s pavement and this July morning was no different.  She breathed in the sweet smell of the phlox and gardenia that lined the foundation of her home as she climbed the steps to the front door.  She turned the key in the lock and stepped into the relatively dark hall, kicking off her running shoes and lining them up against the wall neatly, regardless of the pile of other shoes crowding the entrance helter-skelter.  She sighed at the mess and headed straight for the kitchen for a glass of water, pointedly ignoring the piled dishes and leftover food scraps on the counter and table.

“Nelson, down at th’pub is absolutely bonkers,” the accented voice of Mackey, her roommate, drifted down to her from the stairs and Lex turned to look at her as she came around the end of the banister towards her.

“Yeah?”  she said, raising her eyebrows at the strange outfit her bizarre roommate had seemingly slapped on haphazardly: black spandex bicycle shorts with a kids’ Care Bear t-shirt that looked like she had dug it out of the goodwill bin and barely covered her nearly flat chest.  The girl was shaped like a willow branch but lacked the grace to give her any other descriptor than gangly.

“Bonkers.  Total looney material.  He said the Six Pence were Barney but I told him…”

Lex only half listened as Mackey went on sputtering unintelligible blather about the people who hung out at the run-down bar two blocks over, and where she spent most of her evenings.  She was moving around the kitchen, her words never stopping their seamless thread of nonsense as she gathered the stuff she needed for breakfast and set it down on the table: a bowl from the cupboard, a spoon dug out from the toppling pile of dirty dishes and barely wiped much less cleaned, a box of Lucky Charms and the carton of milk.  Then she turned around and walked out of the room again and back up the stairs, continuing to talk though Lex couldn’t hear her anymore.

With an exasperated sigh, she picked up Mackey’s dishes and returned the cereal to the cupboard.  The milk, as it turned out, was empty and she tossed the carton into the overflowing recycling bin, another resigned sigh pushing past her lips.  Then, glancing at the clock hanging on the wall above the kitchen entryway, she grabbed the chalk from the holder on the wall and wrote “Mack clean up your mess” on the message board, then she headed upstairs to shower and change for work.

⚡️

Lex made her way slowly across the street, peering both ways for bicycle and car traffic.  She headed down the block and spared a quick glance at the couple-months-old restaurant she and her friends had made their official eatery ever since they had bumped into the owner and chef one May morning as he argued vehemently in a mix of English and some Eastern European language, with the delivery truck about not arriving on time and then blocking the whole street.  He was a short and slightly pudgy man with unkempt black hair and caring brown eyes set slightly too wide apart in his round face.  They weren’t quite sure what his name was, because every time he tried to tell them, all they could decipher was something that sounded like Luke, and so that’s what they called him.  Luke had pumped all his life’s savings into the restaurant and his endearing charm and colourful language had earned him a spot in the circle of friends as their favourite restaurateur.  She could see him, as she walked by on her way to work, flipping chairs from the tables and setting them down, ready to start another day and she waved at him cheerfully then continued on her short journey.

She pushed open the glass door of the red-brick house turned record store where she worked: The Lost Needle.  She had been working there since before she had bought the house a block down and across and the cramped set up was as familiar to her as her own living room.  A bell tinkled her arrival and she walked up to the counter set up in the bay window of what would normally have been a sitting room.  The store consisted of a jumble of shelves and display cases jammed in wherever they fit in the two main rooms of the ground floor.  There was still a working kitchen at the back of the old townhouse where she and the other employees sometimes ate, but not usually.  The upstairs bedrooms had been converted into a small office and a storage room for the overstocked merchandise.  The basement had long since been left to its own devices since no one could stand the dank air filled with mold and dust.

“Morning, Sean,” she called out, greeting the black and blue haired twenty-year-old who was currently browsing the “lost singles” section of the display cases instead of going through his work tasks.

“This job would be great if it wasn’t for the customers,” he said, causing Lex to smile to herself, silently agreeing with him as she moved through her start of shift routine, checking that everything was in order and wondering, for the thousandth time it seemed, what the hell they were listening to.  Sean always managed to unearth the most obscure, unlistenable bands to torture her with.

“If there were no customers, Sean, you wouldn’t have a job.  Speaking of which, did you at least open the day’s transactions when you came in?”

“Yes, Alexa, the day is started and ready for the customers who will invariably try to ruin my good mood.”

Lex spared a quick glance at his thoroughly unsmiling face and chuckled.  “Thank you.  Can you do something about that shirt?”

Sean looked down at his open black work shirt with the Lost Needle logo, his name tag missing as always.  The t-shirt he wore underneath had a single sheet music staff with complex key signatures and a single rest in the centre of it.  The words, “Shut up” were written underneath as though telling whoever looked at the shirt that not only were they not worth listening to, but that they were also too ignorant of musical score to understand the reference without help.  “I regret to inform you that I cannot.”

“Do we have to have this argument every day?  It’s a work uniform – you work, you wear the uniform.”

“And I am wearing the uniform, I just refuse to become one of the mindless drones in this country that blindly follow the rules without thought.  I choose freedom, thank you.”

“No, you just rebel at every little thing, do the bare minimum, and still expect to get paid for it… Just like all the twenty-something bums everywhere.  Really, you’re just a conformist hiding under a veneer of disenchantment.”

“Oh, Alexa!  That reminds me…  can I get a raise?”

Lex looked up at the kid with the large goofy smile and tried very hard to keep her straight face firmly in place but to no avail.  Sean was just one of those people that you couldn’t help but like.  They had been working together for so long now, she knew he was all bluster and trying to get a rise out of her.

“No,” she said firmly, returning to her tasks.

“Well, in that case!” he said moving towards the door his hands jammed deeply into his pockets, “I’m going on break!”

“Of course, you are.”

“Want anything?”

“Yeah, why don’t you grab me a latte from Mico’s.”

“Alright, Boss.  I’ll be right back.”

The bell tinkled again as he left and Lex mumbled to herself “Not likely,” as she kept working.  She moved from behind the counter and picked up the box of new arrivals Sean had left, unopened, on the floor.  She dug the X-acto knife out from under the counter as the doorbell tinkled again.  She looked up and acknowledged the teenage boy that had just walked in, making a bee-line for the relatively small CD section in the next room.  She returned to her task, quickly running through the contents list of the box and checking off each of the records.  Then she left the list on the counter to enter into the database after she was done placing the new arrivals.

She grabbed a few of the vinyl records and headed to the punk section in the front room.  She leafed through the sleeves in the stand quickly and placed the records in the right order, adding the freshly received Sex Pistols to the collection.  The bell tinkled again and Lex looked up quickly to see that someone had just come into the store.  She called out a greeting, moving to the next display over to put away another record.

“Hey,” a deep, smooth masculine voice said from a few feet away, “I’m looking for some Pink Floyd, where would that be?”

“Vinyl or disc?” she asked, not looking up.

“Vinyl.  Only way to listen to Floyd.”

Lex smiled, “You’re not wrong there.  You’ll find our Pink Floyd selection at the back and to the right under psych. rock.”

She looked up at the man standing a few feet away from her as he turned away looking to where she had indicated he could find what he was looking for.  He was dressed simply with light wash blue jeans and a dark T-shirt, a Dallas Cowboys baseball cap on his head.  He moved off towards the back of the room and Lex found herself frowning.  She was sure she had seen him somewhere before.  She watched him for a minute but couldn’t put her finger on it.  She shook herself and returned to the counter to get more records.  As she stood at the end where she had left the box, her gaze drawn once more to the man’s broad shoulders as he browsed through the different rock records, occasionally picking one up and looking at the sleeve, the television in the corner beside the cash register caught her attention.  Her shoulders slumped and she frowned as the kid from earlier emerged from the back room and headed for the door.

“Bad news, kiddo,” she said loudly, turning to look right at the fourteen-fifteen-year-old who had stopped and was looking at her wide-eyed.  “You got caught on Candid Camera.”  She pointed to the television displaying the back of the store where she had just seen the teen slip a CD under his shirt.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, lady,” he said, his voice shaky from nerves or maybe just puberty.

“Look, this can go one of three ways: one, I call the cops, they frisk you and find the CD and I press charges for shoplifting.  Two, you man up and pay for the CD.  Or three, you march your skinny butt back there and put it back where it goes, no harm, no foul.”  She paused, staring at the kid patiently.  “Your choice.”

The teen squirmed for a moment, looking towards the door and maybe trying to decide if he should make a break for it, Lex really hoping he wouldn’t.  Finally, he turned around and headed back to the CD section, crossing the vaguely familiar customer who was now making his way to the counter holding a couple of albums in his hands.  Lex kept her eyes on the camera while the kid was in the back to make sure he put back whatever he had taken.

“That was pretty cool of you,” the man said, handing over the records he was getting.

She looked up at him, finally getting a good look at his face under his cap’s bent visor, and her stomach dropped into her shoes.  Of course he looked familiar, she had been staring at that face on TV almost every week for the past year on Supernatural.  She swallowed, taking the two records from him to run them through the cash register, hoping he hadn’t noticed her staring.

“He’s just a kid, doing dumb kid stuff,” she dismissed with a wave of her hand.  “And besides,” she went on, trying to act normally and failing miserably as her words just came pouring out of her mouth, “I just didn’t feel like filling out police reports all day.  So, The Wall, and Dark Side…  Classic choices, I would’ve gone for Wish You Were Here personally, but these are pretty safe, listenability-wise.  Are you planning on pulling a Dark Side of the Rainbow?”  Lex finally managed to get a hold of her banter and stopped talking, closing her eyes for a moment, feeling slightly embarrassed like she always did when her words galloped out of control.

“They’re for a friend,” he said after a short pause and she dared to look at him again.

The smile on his face was almost dazzling as his eyes sparkled with merriment watching her.  How was it possible that his eyes were even greener in person than on TV?  She tried to swallow, but her mouth had gone cotton dry.  She managed to tell him his total and ducked under the counter to get him a bag.

“Um, hi!” said the shaky teen’s voice from the other side of the counter and she straightened up again, quickly. “Aren’t you…  Dean Winchester?”

The smile faltered on the actor’s face but only for a moment, before he glanced at the kid, “Yeah.  Jensen Ackles, actually.”

“Oh my God!  This is amazing!  I love your show, man. _‘I hope your apple pie is freakin’ worth it!’_ Gold, man.  I’ve watched, like, every episode.”

Lex was watching the exchange, inexplicably feeling slightly embarrassed about the kid’s behaviour as she noticed Jensen’s polite thank you.  The kid didn’t seem to notice the actor’s subdued enthusiasm though as he kept gushing.  Then he pulled a cell phone out of his pocket.

“Hey, do you think I could get a picture with you?  My friends will not believe this is happening!”

“Sure,” he said with a slightly tired smile.

It took her a second to realize that the kid was holding his phone out towards her without even looking at her, like she was not worth his attention.  She couldn’t really blame him though, it’s not every day you meet your favourite TV star.  She took the phone from his hand gingerly and looked over the buttons quickly to figure out what to press.  She didn’t have a cell phone herself, so the whole thing seemed very alien to her.  She figured it out though and held up the phone as the actor obligingly leaned sideways a little towards the kid who was holding both his thumbs up and looking beyond excited.  She snapped the picture and handed the phone back feeling ridiculous.

“Thanks, man!” the kid said to the man quickly checking the picture, then he added, “Hey, so, I was thinking I want to be an actor too, do you have any tips for me?  That’d be so cool.”

“Yeah, actually.  Here’s a tip for you.  Don’t shoplift.”  The actor pursed his lips and narrowed his eyes in a look she had seen so many times on the show she nearly started laughing.  The kid’s face fell and he muttered an answer as he headed out the door, properly abashed.  She watched him leave, smiling to herself, amused.  Jensen’s voice pulled her back quickly though. “Sorry about that,” he said.

Lex looked up, surprised that he was apologizing to her.  He was holding out a couple of bills and she took them from him.  “No worries.  Must get annoying for you though.  That probably happens all the time.”  She put the money in the cash drawer and pulled out his change, her hand thankfully steady as she dropped it into his open palm.  He was watching her curiously but then pulled back his hand to put away the coins while she put his records in a black store bag.  She handed it to him and in a combination of nerves and automated response she said, “Thank you for shopping at the Lost Needle, have a nice day, and we hope you _get Lost_ again.”

It was a stupid sign off at the best of times but absolutely mortifying in the present circumstances.  Jensen’s quiet chuckle, though, was almost worth the embarrassment as he left with a smile and a “thank you, I think.”  She watched him through the window as long as he was in sight, then, realization finally dawned on her and her legs turned to jelly and she had to lean back against the counter for support.  The doorbell tinkled again announcing another arrival and she looked up quickly, suddenly certain that he had come back in, but it was just the blue-haired Sean carrying two coffees.

“Sorry I took so long, Alexa,” he said, not sounding sorry at all, “The line-up at Mico’s was a nightmare.  They ran out of milk or something so all the people who want those stupid sugary frappuccino aberrances were getting ready to riot and it took all I had to get out of there with these in one piece.”

Lex looked out the window again, but all she could see was the sidewalk with the usual sparse pedestrian traffic.  She looked at Sean in complete awe.  “I don’t think you’ll believe who was just in here.”

Sean stopped his movements, halfway through taking a sip of his hot coffee and looked at her from under his eyebrows.  He straightened up and looked around, “Who?  Was it someone famous?” he said quickly, losing his usual unaffected composure at the prospect of meeting the cultural elite.

Lex opened her mouth to tell him, but then shut it quickly, feeling like keeping the experience to herself after all.  “Uh, no.  I just meant we had a customer.  Someone bought some Pink Floyd.”

“Urgh!  Was it Dark Side of the Moon?” he asked, rolling his eyes and going back to sipping at his coffee, getting ready to settle into another rant about conformity and how classic rock stations were destroying the purity of good music.

Her gaze unfocused, thinking about the actor’s smile and his green eyes as he spoke to her, already feeling the faint flutter of a cherished memory in her stomach.  She raised the coffee to her lips and took a sip.  The absence of the usual milky taste of her preferred latte made her grimace and she put it down pensively.

“Hey Sean, think you can hold down the fort for a bit?”

Surprised, he stopped talking and looked at her.  She stared back daring him to say anything about her taking a mid-shift break and he finally just shrugged and sipped at his coffee again with a nonchalant “Whatever.”  Lex grabbed her inadequate drink and headed out the door to clear her head and get some milk from the corner store.

As she walked down the street, she could feel her previous giddiness at having so unlikely met a celebrity waning and leaving her feeling strange.  She couldn’t quite put her finger on it as she walked into the store and headed straight for the dairy fridge at the back.  It felt like something was missing.  She pondered about it some more as she paid for her milk and walked back out.

Lex crossed the street again, heading back to work and looked at her milkless coffee longingly.  She tucked the milk carton under her arm as she popped the lid and slipped it under the coffee cup, letting her peripheral senses take care of navigating the familiar sidewalk as she did.  Steam came off the still hot coffee inside and she balanced the small milk carton on top while she unscrewed the cap and somehow managed to lift the tab, pretty proud of herself for not dropping everything to the pavement.  She was just about to cross one of the small intersections, glancing up the one way at the lack of cars when everything came to a sudden, crashing standstill.

⚡️


	2. Chapter 2

Lex took a step back to keep her balance as she stared at the mess of coffee and milk drenching both her shirt and the shirt and jeans of the man she had run into headlong.  The irritated growl and the distinctly black plastic bag in the man’s hand left Lex no doubt as to whom she had just washed in hot liquid and she raised her head in horror to look up into Jensen’s scowling face.  He was looking down at himself, his hands full and unable to do anything about the mess.

“Oh crap!  Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” Lex stammered, digging in her pockets for a napkin.

“Naw, It’s fine.  I wasn’t looking where I was going.  Are you okay?” he looked her over quickly and a spark of recognition flashed in his eyes.

“Yeah, I’m sorry, I don’t have a napkin or anything.”

He looked down at himself again, “Doesn’t matter, I’m gonna smell like fermented milk anyways.  Damn it!”

An idea struck Lex and she started talking before she really had it all thought out, “I live nearby, you can wash up there if you want.”

He looked at her, uncertainty all over his face, as her brain demanded to know what she was thinking.  Then, he looked down at his phone again and brought it up above his head, narrowing his eyes at the sunlight and then aiming the phone the other way in a very familiar dance of lost cell reception.  “Thanks, but I just need to get the car back.  Why the hell is there no signal on this piece of crap?”

“Ah yeah, Nowhere Ville never has signal, it’s like the Bermuda Triangle of cell reception.  It’s why I don’t bother with the things.”  He glanced at her without humour, like he couldn’t care less about her cell phone ownership and she swallowed nervously, “Um…  I do have a house phone though, you could use.”

He glanced at her again and then back to his useless phone and finally at someone down the street who had stopped and was staring at them.  “How close is your place?”

Lex turned and pointed across the street at her front door, the third house from the corner.  With a resigned sigh, he relented and gestured for her to lead the way, putting his phone back in his pocket and plucking at his wet t-shirt.

It was with a sense of surrealism that Lex led the way into the townhouse, suddenly horrified at the mess of shoes, clothes, bags, and wayward dishes all over the place.  She stood aside while Jensen walked past her and into the house, his broad shoulders at eye level, surprising her: on the show he seemed so much shorter than his brother.  She shook the stray thought away, closing the door behind her as his eyes skimmed the hallway casually.  He glanced into the living room on the right while she desperately tried to make her brain function normally.  These kinds of things just didn’t happen in real life, her practical brain kept repeating over and over.

She turned towards the hallway.  Filtered greenish light was coming in from the shady bay window in the living room, lighting up his handsome face under his baseball cap.  He turned towards her and she cleared her throat, remembering why this dreamlike moment was happening in the first place.  “Um… so the washroom’s upstairs.  The door in the middle,” she explained, pointing at the stairs beside him, while he turned and looked up.  “And the phone’s in the kitchen back there.” She pointed down the hall behind him, where more light was spilling in through the patio doors, and he again turned his head to look at where she was pointing.

He glanced down at the shopping bags in his hands and put the records down in the living room entrance, then headed around the end of the banister and up towards the second floor.  Lex took a deep breath and ran her hands through her hair, getting a whiff of the now cooled, but still wet coffee stain on her work shirt.  She huffed, amused, wondering vaguely about the odds, until she remembered the state of the kitchen, where he would be going next.

She rushed into the sunny room and started scrambling to at least camouflage the disaster, sparing a glance at the chalkboard where a swirly “Okay” was written over her earlier message.  Murderous fantasies flashed through her head as she turned and focused on clearing the small kitchen table and the section of the counter next to where the phone was, shoving dirty dishes and notebooks and papers indiscriminately into the dishwasher and refrigerator.  She wiped down the table, scattering the crumbs to the floor, and then straightened out the remaining odds and ends.

She heard the stairs creak as someone came down and she turned to see Jensen going around the foot of the stairs and walking towards the kitchen.  Lex was stunned into staring at the impossibility of the god-like creature standing in her kitchen entrance.  He had changed into a pair of dark wash jeans and a buttoned-down green plaid shirt, the top two buttons undone exposing the base of his throat.  He had removed his baseball cap and his short brown hair was damp and spiked upwards to fight the lingering hat hair.  He was rolling his sleeves up to his elbows, exposing the watch on his left wrist and the corded leather bracelet on his right.  He glanced around as he stepped into the kitchen, then turned his eyes on her, the combination of the sunlight from the patio doors and the green of his shirt making them flash dramatically and Lex finally snapped out of it, looking away with difficulty and pointing to the phone hanging on the wall.

“Thanks,” he said as he took the wireless phone off the base and his cell phone out of his pocket, glancing at it to dial the number.

Lex stood by awkwardly, unsure what she should do as she looked away, wondering if she should be leaving the room, but really not wanting to.  She was trying very hard not to listen as he spoke into the phone, but his smooth, deep voice kept pulling at her attention.  She had just decided that it would be best for her to clear out when he hung up and put the phone back in its cradle.

“Car should be here in a few,” he said, addressing her.

“Okay… good…” Lex scrambled around for something to say.

“Thank you for your… hospitality,” he said, turning away towards the front door again.

He was leaving, Lex’s brain went into a panic suddenly, “Wait!” she said and he turned around to look at her again, cocking his head to the side and raising his eyebrows.  “I mean… you could wait here… for your ride.  Instead of…  not…  here.”  He frowned, a small smile pulling at his lips confusedly.  “Would you like something to drink?”

“No, thanks really…”

“I have coffee?” he raised his eyebrows again, “Oh, right… um… probably not.  How about some water?”  Lex moved to the fridge in the corner and opened the door, wondering for a second why there was a pen in the butter dish.  “I have Gatorade…  well not really Gatorade, it’s more a generic equivalent that tastes nothing like Gatorade.”

“Really, I’m fine.”

“Something to eat?  Pudding!”

“Did you just call me pudding?”

“Um, no NO!” Lex blushed and ducked into the fridge to pull out the bowl of chocolate pudding she had made the night before. “I meant, pudding to eat…  not that pudding doesn’t fit you…  you’re both sweet and delicious…” Lex widened her eyes, what the hell was happening? “I mean!”  She barely registered the quiet chuckle.  “Okay, I’m just gonna shut up now.” Lex was completely mortified.  This was turning into a nightmare.  “You should probably go.  You know, before I embarrass myself,” she added groaning internally at her awkwardness.

She walked past him and straight for the front door, Jensen following behind her.  She paused with her hand on the handle and looked back at him in the dark entrance as he stood across the narrow space, waiting.  She felt a tingling come over her as she realized that once he was out that door, that would be it, she wouldn’t see him again.

“Before you go, can I just say…  I think you’re just… amazing?  I just-- it’s not like I’ll ever have this opportunity again, you know?”

His lips parted into a smile, showing just the barest hint of teeth, before closing again.  “What’s your name?” he asked her, his eyes crinkling in merriment.

“Lex.  Alexa, but everyone calls me Lex,” she answered a little dumbfounded and wishing the verbal diarrhea would end.

“Lex,” he said, like he was testing it out.  “It was a pleasure to meet you Lex, if a little messy.”

“It was nice to meet you… Jensen.  I mean, this whole thing was completely surreal… but it was nice, too.”

His lips stretched into another smile and she finally pulled on the handle, realizing she had been blocking the exit all this time, and he walked out into the bright sunny daylight.  She closed the door again kicking herself, “Surreal?  Nice?  Oh God.”  She took two steps staring blankly, her mind having a hard time wrapping around everything that had just happened and opting for going blank instead.  She turned, looking at her familiar hallway with its stairs on one side and the living room opening up the other and the place felt alien somehow, empty.

From behind, the sound of her doorbell startled her and she reached for the handle reflexively.  She pulled open the door and the tall, green-eyed man was standing there.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi,” Lex answered, more than just a little confused, but fluttering on the inside.

“I forgot my records,” he added, looking a little sheepish.

“Right!”

Lex stepped away from the door and walked towards the living room where she could see the black store bag sitting innocently on the ground.  She bent down to grab it while Jensen stepped back inside the house, closing the door again.  Lex turned back and handed him the bag, butterflies dive bombing around in her abdomen as he took it from her, she was so happy that he was there again.  She glanced up at his face, and was surprised to find him looking at her too.  She locked stares with him, entranced by his long, dark eyelashes and she was so busy drinking him in, she hadn’t realized that he was continuing to stare at her too, even though he now had what he had come back for.

He took a step forward and hesitantly put his hand on her shoulder and Lex was too stunned to do anything but stand perfectly still while he leaned down, turning his head to the side.  His lips pressed gently against her cheek and Lex breathed in sharply in surprise, the earthy scent of freshly fallen rain and sun-warmed skin invading her nose pleasantly.  He drew back slightly and paused, the warmth of his skin caressing the side of her face and she turned her head towards him, tilting it ever so slightly, hoping that maybe…

It felt like the moment stretched on for eons before he pressed his lips against hers, his eyes closed as he did, his hand moving up from her shoulder to cradle her neck, his thumb caressing her jaw slowly.  Lex closed her eyes too, the butterflies that had been tumbling around in her stomach exploding into a flurry of wings through her whole body, making her very skin tingle and she raised her hand to lay it against his chest.  Her whole body felt electrified, her hair standing on end as the kiss went on, their lips pressed together.

Then, he pulled away slowly, taking a step back and Lex opened her eyes, her hand falling away, feeling like her heart was going to beat right out of her chest.  Her brain seemed to have stopped working as they stood on either side of the entrance hall.  Slowly, it rebooted to the last thought she’d had before he had stepped back into the house.

“I’m sorry about the uh…  surreal… thing.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he answered, looking like he was a little lost, “I thought the sweet and delicious thing was much worse.”

They stared at each other and Lex could feel the tension like a rubber band between them and she considered what would happen if she kissed him again.  However, she would never find out because that was the moment that the sound of a key in the front door lock drew both their attention to it.

“Oh, God no!” Lex exclaimed looking at him again, “That’s my roommate.  Whatever’s about to happen…  I’m really sorry.”

The door swung open and in walked Mackey with her gangly arms and legs, her lopsided, messy blonde curls falling over one eye as she walked right between Lex and Jensen, paying absolutely no mind to him.  “Lexie, I might have to borrow a Lady Godiva,” she threw back casually over her shoulder as she headed towards the kitchen.  “I’m just gonna get a snack ‘cause I’m Hank Marvin, but I need a new Whistle.  Mine’s Brown.”

Lex frowned at Mackey’s unintelligible banter and turned back to look at Jensen.  He was looking at her again, worry on his face.  “I should go,” he said and Lex could no longer feel that tension, the moment broken by Mackey’s intrusion.  She tucked her hands in her back pockets, glancing at the door, feeling awkward as he went on, “Probably shouldn’t… tell anyone about… this.”  He pointed to her and then himself.

“Oh! Yeah, no…  for sure,” she sputtered again, feeling the nervous chatter returning regardless of her trying to keep it in check, “I mean, I’ll probably tell myself sometimes… but no worries, I won’t believe me.”

Jensen chuckled, a deep, rich sound from the back of his throat, the worry lines disappearing and replaced by a smile before he opened the door and walked out again.  Lex closed the door behind him and leaned against it letting out a disbelieving sigh.  “Oh my God,” she said again under her breath wondering if she’d ever be able to think straight again.  Mackey suddenly moved into her peripherals making her startle away from the door.

“You bangin’?” she asked her, biting off the end of something in her hand and chewing.

“What?” Lex asked and then looked at the red box Mackey was eating from, “What are you eating?”

“I dunno,” she said glancing down at the contents of the box and pulling out another bone-shaped treat, “the box said chicken flavoured, so I was thinking KFC, but this is rubbish.”

“Mack, those are Milkbones.  They’re for dogs.”

“Oh! That’s it!” She bit off the end of another treat, with a satisfied smile on her face while Lex shook her head, dumbfounded.  “Fancy a little Auntie Nelly?”  she asked, holding up a DVD case from the Blockbuster across the street.

⚡️

Lex and Mackey were sitting in the living room, curtains drawn, lights out, the clock going on midnight.  Mackey was snacking on God knows what, her long legs spread out on the three-seater sofa while Lex sat on one of the footrests, leaning her arms on her knees, completely entranced by the screen for the past four hours.

By some odd coincidence, Mackey had rented the second season of Supernatural.  It was a whole different experience watching Dean… Jensen on the screen, now.  Somehow, since meeting him, it was like she could see both the character Dean Winchester and the man Jensen Ackles at the same time and it was captivating.  She watched, on screen, as Dean sat on a couch watching TV and his girlfriend brought him a beer.  She remembered this episode, it was the one where he had been trapped in a dream world by some creature, seemingly giving him his heart’s desire while, really, he was being sucked dry.  She had caught that one as it aired a couple months back so when Jensen suddenly leaned over kissing the actress depicting his girlfriend on screen, she had expected it.  What she hadn’t expected was the deep longing in her gut and the tingling in her lips as she recalled the actor’s plump lips pressed against hers.

“Lucky twat,” Mackey suddenly exclaimed from the couch, startling Lex out of her reverie.  “Imagine being paid to Hit ‘n’ Miss that.  I’d do it for free…  bargain—right here!”  Lex smiled to herself awash in the blueish glow of the television, if only Mackey realized that she had actually brushed by him earlier that day.  “Mmmmm, I’d finish him like cheesecake.”  For once Lex understood that analogy, a tingling going through her as she fantasized about what could have happened if Mackey had not come home when she had.  “You know he’s in town right?  Him and the tall bloke too.”

Lex didn’t answer, returning to her quiet daydreaming while she stared at the screen, her heart in her throat while he ranted at his father’s grave, affected by Jensen’s emotions on a whole new level, the sight of his tears forming a lump in her throat as she tried to imagine what he had to conjure to make them flow.

The episode finished a little later, and Mackey announced her retreat to her bed, but Lex simply could not look away as she watched the rest of the season into the small hours of the night.

⚡️


	3. Chapter 3

Lex punched in the customer’s purchases and took his credit card to finalize the transaction, letting her body run on automatic while her thoughts strayed, for the thousandth time, to her encounter a few days before.  She thought that the giddiness would have worn off by now but every little thing seemed to set off the memories.

When the bell on the door tinkled with customers coming in or leaving, her head invariably turned to look, a hopeful lump in her throat.  If a particularly rumbly engine cruised down the road she’d twist around to look out the bay window, thinking that maybe it was that gorgeous Impala from the show, Jensen behind the wheel.  Even the ridiculous store sign off, _Get Lost_ , left her floundering in nostalgia.

“Thank you, and please get Lost again,” she said mechanically, to the amused smirk of the customer as he took his purchases and left, making the bell tinkle again

She leaned down, crossing her arms on the counter and lay her head on them, thinking again about his smile and the endorphin releasing sound of his low chuckle.

“Excuse me,” a strange voice said and she straightened up again, not realizing there was still a customer in the store. “Do you have the new Korn CD?”

Lex stared blankly at the man in his late forties wearing a suit and tried not to raise an eyebrow.  Maybe under the corporate disguise he was really a nu metal enthusiast.

“Um… no, it doesn’t come out until next week.”

“But I really need it today,” he insisted.

Lex frowned, unsure what he was expecting of her, “I’m really sorry, but I don’t control record releases.  If it’s Korn you want I’m sure we have a few of their earlier albums in the CD section.  Or I can suggest a few bands that influenced the nu metal genre you might like, if you want to try vinyl.”

“No.  It has to be the new album.  And I need it today. Is there someone you can call?  Someone who can get this done?  Maybe a manager?”

Lex chaffed at the subtle insult, and tried very hard to not lose patience, remembering that she was in fact the manager: responsible and the image of The Lost Needle.  She took a deep breath.  “I’m really sorry, there’s nothing that can be done.  We receive all new releases the day before the official release date so we can enter them in the system for sales the next day.  The new Korn is only being released next week.  You can either come back then, or get something different.  I can suggest a few bands you might enjoy,” she tried again.

“You don’t understand, I need this CD… today.”

Lex took another deep breath, “Let me direct you to someone who can help… SEAN!”  The customer turned around as Lex looked over his shoulder at Sean popping his head out of the back room.  “This customer needs help finding an album… go nuts.”

Sean frowned at her, confused for a moment, before the man trying to buy an unreleased album walked over to him and repeated his query.  She just heard the beginning of his rant on the conspiracy behind album release dates, before she grabbed her wallet from under the counter and headed out the door into the partly cloudy day under the shade of Nowhere.  She walked over to Mico’s on the next corner, waving at Luke who was talking to a couple sitting at a window table of his restaurant.

She passed by again on her way back with her latte, careful to look all around, in case fate had decided to throw him in her path again, but no.  She walked back into the store pressing back against the open door as the customer stormed out and she cheerfully called out to him to _get Lost_ , smiling to herself, finally realizing how useful that catch phrase could be and giving Sean a thumbs up.

⚡️

Later that afternoon, her shift finally over, she came into the house to find Mackey lounging on the brick parapet that used to be a BBQ hutch, but was now barely a privacy wall for the old stone deck.

“We do have some pretty comfortable chairs you know,” she said, walking out onto the deck and glancing at Mackey’s bikini clad body while she soaked up the sun, her fair skin already pink and in real danger of going lobster red.

“Why deny the Dodge next door the sight of this sensual goddess?”

Lex raised her eyebrows as Mackey ran her hands down her own wood-plank body but didn’t comment, instead sitting down in her favourite blue Adirondack chair, letting the heat of the mid-afternoon sun through the maple’s canopy wrap her like a blanket and soothe her tired brain; living in her memories and fantasies while still having to interact with the real world, was absolutely exhausting.  She glanced down at the papers held safe from the wind by the decorative lantern on the black wrought iron table and sat up again.

“Are these the messages?” Lex asked.

Mackey nodded, “Yeah, most of ‘em.”

Lex looked up from the barely legible scribbles of phone numbers and names, one was a survey and one was from her sister Taylor.  “What do you mean most?”

“Well, yeah,” she said turning to look at Lex and undoubtedly seeing her annoyed expression, “What? You expect me to write down all the messages?”

With a sigh Lex rubbed at her forehead, already feeling a headache forming. “Yes, Mack.  I told you before, if you insist on answering the phone, you need to let me know who called for me.”

“Oh, alright then.  It’s total rubbish.”

“So, who else called?”

“What?”

“You said these were most of the messages… so who else called?”

“Right!  Um… your Pitch and Toss called.”

“Who?” she asked, wondering why she was bothering with Mackey’s jibberish.

“Actually, might have been that bloke from down the Battle Cruiser.”

“Who?” she asked again, pinching the bridge of her nose.

“You know, Jack, from the Corner Pub.  Wanted to see if you were free on Saturday.”

“Mackey, why would he want to go out with me?  I don’t even know who that is.”

“Ah… well maybe that was for me then.”

With a shake of her head Lex stood up, just to get away from the frustration of dealing with her ridiculous roommate.  As she opened the door to head inside though, Mackey called out to her.

“You know, if we’re going to do the whole obsessive, write down all the messages thing, someone called for you on Wednesday… I think it was Wednesday…. Could’ve been Thursday…” she trailed off for a moment, her gaze unfocused then suddenly came back, “Nope, it was definitely Wednesday, ‘cause that was the day the blighter from City bollocks’d up and finished Hearts.”

“Mack!  Who called on Wednesday?”

“Yup, right, so this bloke, Jay, very sexy voice, said to call him at the hotel.  What are you up to, you slapper?  You meeting men in hotels now?”  Lex’s brain was swirling and the floor was tilting, she leaned against the doorframe and took a deep breath, realizing that Jensen had called her.  He had actually tried to contact her!  She scrambled into the kitchen, letting Mackey ramble on to herself.  “Have you been playing hide the sausage with some rich weirdo?  Of course you have, you randy wench…. Why else would you need a code word?”

“Code word?  What?” Lex snapped back to attention as she dug out the City’s phone book from the back of a drawer.

“Yeah, he said and I quote, ‘Tell her it’s Jay, I’m staying at the Hilton.’  Marvellously sexy Hobson’s, he had.  Then he said to use the code word.”

Lex was breathing heavily, staring at Mackey in disbelief, “What was the code word?”

“Haven’t the foggiest,” she answered nonchalantly.

Mackey nearly fell off the parapet as Lex rushed her to grab the phone in a frenzy of realization: he had called her on Wednesday and it was already Friday.  What if he wasn’t there anymore?  She dialled the number for the Hilton and Mackey came inside, throwing on a men’s suit jacket over her bathing suit.  She followed Lex to the living room where she lay down on the couch, poking at her pink skin while Lex paced nervously in the bay window, clutching the phone to her ear.

“City Hilton, how may I help you?” said a voice on the other end of the line.

Lex attempted to explain the situation to the man at the Hilton’s front desk, as she floundered for an explanation that didn’t make her sound like a psycho fan who just wanted to get information on a guest celebrity.  The man did not seem convinced, of course, and kept repeating that no one called Jensen Ackles was staying there.

“This is serious.  I’m not some stalker.  My roommate took the call and she forgot the code word.  Please, he called me on Wednesday, can you at least tell me if Jensen’s still at the hotel?”

“I’m sorry, we don’t have anyone by that name staying here.”

“Try ‘Lex Luther’,” said Mackey suddenly, and Lex turned to look at her dumbfounded.

“What?” she asked, just to be sure.

“Lex Luther… the code word,” she was lying on the couch, with her eyes closed and her arms crossed over her chest like she was ready for a nap.

Lex closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose redirecting her attention to the person on the phone.  “I don’t suppose it makes sense if I say… Lex Luther?”

“I’ll put you through right away.  One moment please.”

Lex opened her eyes, her heart slamming in her chest and her palms suddenly slick, it had worked.  Soon, she would be talking to him.  What should she say?

“Hello?” answered Jensen’s distinctly rich voice.

“Um, hi!  Jensen…  hi.”  Lex slapped her hand to her face, mortified once more at her awkwardness.  Why was it only with him?  “It’s Lex Larsen…  from the Lost Needle, the record store.”

“Oh, hey,” he answered, sounding distracted.  The hope Lex had started to feel was waning quickly, his lack of enthusiasm throwing her off.  “You took your time calling back, was starting to think you didn’t want anything to do with me.”

“What?” she forced her surprised voice back down to a normal register, “Um, no no.  Mackey, my clueless roommate, didn’t give me the message.  Trust me, I’m thrilled that you called.”  Lex tried to calm herself down again.

“Yeah, about that…  Now’s really not a good time, there’s about a million things going on, but I wanted to talk to you.”

“Yeah, um…  did you want me to swing by the hotel later, maybe?” she asked, her heart thumping against her ribs.

Jensen hesitated on the other end, and then a distant voice cut in, “Yeah, I’ll be right there,” he said, then addressed her again, “Okay, why don’t we do that.  I should be done around four.  Does that work for you?”

“Four’s great.  I’ll see you then.”

Jensen gave her the number of the room and then signed off, the phone clicking and the dial tone going flat before Lex shook herself and hung up.

“So…” Mackey said suddenly from the couch, “When you say Jensen Ackles…  Do you mean—“

“Not now Mackey.”

“Okay, I was just askin’.”

Lex glanced at the clock and saw it was already going on 2:30.  She kicked into gear and ran upstairs to get ready.

⚡️

After much debate and throwing around her entire closet while precariously wrapped in a damp towel, she decided on a coral, a-line, wide-strapped sundress she particularly liked because it had pockets in the front and the buttons let her control how much cleavage she showed.  She added a pair of wedge-heeled, cork sandals and her lucky white gold medallion.  She had decided to let her hair down, her natural wave wrapping around her shoulders and down to the middle of her back and behaving for once.  She added a touch of makeup to her eyes and lips and pulled her thin wallet, containing a little cash, her ID and her debit card out of her pants and tucked it into one of the pockets of her dress.  Then, she rushed out of the house to catch the bus.

She strolled into the lobby at five minutes to four and walked up to the elevators directly, not bothering with the people at the front desk, since Jensen had given her the room number.  She hit the button for the third floor, mentally preparing herself to see him again, smoothing her dress and buttoning and unbuttoning the top button, unsure what was best.  When the doors opened, Lex glanced at the door numbers quickly and started down the hall towards the right.  She drew up to Jensen’s room door, took one last steadying breath, deciding to leave the top button undone after all, and knocked.

A woman in a dark grey skirt suit opened the door, looking a little hectic. “Hi there!  So sorry, we’re running a little late,” she said, shoving a thin magazine-like document in her hands.  Lex took it, glancing down to see a picture of Jensen standing slightly behind his TV brother Sam with the hood of the Impala from the show off to the side and back.  The words “Supernatural: Season 3” were written in the show’s usual font across the centre of it.  “What did you think of the season 3 promo?” the woman asked her.

Lex looked up, intending to tell her that there was some sort of mistake, as she was ushered into the main room, but her words caught in her throat when she saw the different people sitting and standing scattered around the room, all of whom were dressed in a variety of business attire.  She was by far the most casually dressed there.  She tried to take a deep breath, to understand what was happening, but try as she might, her brain just could not figure out if this was normal when it came to visiting celebrities.  Of course, those words he had told her as he left her house were still haunting her too, _“Probably shouldn’t… tell anyone about… this.”_   What if that applied to these people as well?

She followed the woman to where she had stopped by a desk and picked up a clipboard.  “Which publication are you with?”

Publication?  She glanced around quickly and realized that the people scattered around the room were probably all journalists.  Her level of panic rose imagining the frenzy if they thought there was a story to her presence.  Lex’s brain latched on to the only thing she could think of as she turned back to face the woman, “The Lost Needle… Press,” she said, nervously.

Without looking up, the woman, a publicist most likely Lex started to realize, spoke again, “I don’t think I know that one,” she said going down the list on her clipboard.

“We’re a small magazine.  Only three or four issues every year.  We focus on music mainly, but also on certain shows and movies.”  Lex wondered where all those ideas were coming from, but the publicist at least seemed convinced as she scribbled a note down at the bottom of her papers.  Lex looked around the room again, worried that she would be lumped in with the reporters.  She took a step closer and lowered her voice, “Actually, I think Mr. Ackles is expecting me.  I’m Alexa Larsen…  Lex?”

The publicist looked up briefly, obviously ready to move on to her next task.  “Have a seat Ms Larsen, please.”

Feeling a little discouraged, Lex sat down on one of the few available chairs, smoothing the cotton twill of her dress’s skirt nervously and laying the press packet on her knees.  What was she supposed to do now, she wondered, worried that maybe she would miss her chance again, and angry once more with Mackey for not getting her the message on time.

“That’s a pretty dress you’re wearing,” pointed out the woman sitting stiffly beside her.  She looked to be about the same age as Lex, mid- to late-twenties, but she was dressed in a grey pencil skirt and a black blouse, and she was eyeing Lex slightly condescendingly.  “Print?”

“Print what?” asked Lex.

“Your report, it’s print?  Must be, can’t imagine they’d let you on the air… wearing that.”

Lex looked down at herself again, feeling a little self-conscious faced with this girl’s condescension.  “Um, yeah I know.  I don’t normally dress like this for…  this kind of thing, it’s just that I have a party in town to go to afterwards and I didn’t want to have to cart around a change of clothes, you know?”

“Ah, must be nice not having to worry about _image_ …” she started as she cocked an eyebrow at her, but her next, certainly waspish, words were cut off by the publicist coming back into the room and calling her over.

With a sigh of relief, Lex stood up, holding onto the press packet a little tightly, and followed her to a door.  The woman knocked briskly and stepped inside, Lex following her in.  The room was richly decorated in heavy velvet drapes and there was a two-seater sofa facing two arm chairs in the same Victorian revival style with a little table between the two and a coffee table between the chairs and the sofa.  Standing by the window dressed in a light beige suit and a brown shirt, was Jensen, his hands in his pants pockets, his hair perfectly styled, looking like a model bathed in the outdoor light.  He turned when they came in and a smile crept onto his face as he came around the sofa towards them.

The publicist spoke up, showing Lex into the room and pointing to one of the chairs.  “This is Ms Larsen of Lost Needle Press.”

A confused look came over Jensen’s face for a moment but he recovered quickly and stretched his hand towards her, a charming smile on his face.  “Ms. Larsen,” he said and Lex reached for his hand to shake it.  The publicist was puttering around behind her and Lex wasn’t sure how far this charade had to go.  Jensen sat down on the sofa and gestured that she should take a seat too.  She sat on the padded seat across from him, smoothing the back of her skirt with one hand, and crossed one leg over the other.  She glanced at the publicist again who simply wasn’t leaving and she scurried around her head for a question.

“So, Jensen,” she started, getting a pouting smirk from him, he looked like he was enjoying himself, “Last season, Dean sold his soul to save his brother…  What can we expect from the brothers in the coming season?”  She heard the door close behind her and she leaned towards him, more familiarly, “I’m sorry about the Lost Needle thing… they shoved this thing in my hands and I panicked.”

“No, I’m the one who should apologize, I really thought this would be over by now.” The smirk on his face turned to a full-on smile, undermining his apologetic tone, and he sat back on the sofa, stretching his arms along the back, his ankle resting on his knee. “So, you watch the show?”

“Um, yeah…” she said, as his smile grew even wider, making her heart flutter but also annoying her, feeling like he was making fun of her. “I’ve seen a few episodes.”  She paused while he pouted at her again, his lips settling into a more relaxed smile.  “I’m really sorry about not calling back sooner.  Mackey is a complete waste of space on the best of days, and the whole code word thing went right over her head.”

“Yeah, it’s a stupid security thing.  I always pick a comic book villain.”

Lex smiled and his lips stretched again to mirror hers as they just looked at each other.  She felt the beginnings of that strange tension from after their kiss and wasn’t sure if it was real or just in her head.  She took a breath and brought up the reason she was there, “You said you wanted to talk to me?”

She knew something was wrong when the smile left his face and he hunched forward leaning his elbows on his knees.  “Yeah,” he said, then looked at her, a completely serious expression on his face.  “I just wanted to make sure everything was ok…  with the kiss, I mean.  I didn’t mean to overstep and I’m sorry if it was…  forward.”

Lex was shocked: she was taken by surprise and couldn’t believe that he thought he needed to apologize for that.  “No, really.  It’s fine.”  He kept his eyes on her and a calm came over her suddenly, the words just slipping out before she could stop them, “More than fine.  It was like something out of a dream.”

Jensen was looking at her earnestly with his big green eyes, his hands clasped as he sat leaning forward, “A good dream… I hope.”  Everything felt like it slowed down, the room charged with a strange electric current as she and Jensen stared at each other trance-like.

“The best kind,” she said feeling like the air had been sucked out of her lungs.

“What happens next?  In the dream?”

“Well…” She wondered briefly how far she should go, then decided she had nothing to lose, “It’s a dream, so I can do what I want.  And I wouldn’t be so nervous, so I guess…  I’d just… walk over there and… kiss you again.”

Lex’s hair was on end again feeling that rubber band taut between them and pulling her towards him as he watched her, his face unreadable.  This could not all be wishful thinking, she knew.  She could feel whatever this was that was pulling her to him like gravity.  She stood up, determined to act on her impulse, when suddenly there was a quick knock at the door and the publicist came in again, stopping her mid-stride.

“Time’s up.  Did you get what you needed?” she asked her.

Feeling bold, Lex responded, “Not quite, no.”

“One more question then,” she said and left again.

Lex turned back to look at Jensen, but just like with Mackey, the moment was gone, dissipated like a puff of smoke.  He stood up and walked over to her.  Not ready to be dismissed, and forgotten, emboldened by the previous charge in the air, she spoke up, looking up into his eyes, “Listen, I’m just going to jump in and ask, because I’ll hate myself forever if I don’t…”  The barest crease appeared on his forehead as he frowned expectantly and she continued, “Are you busy, tonight?”

Jensen’s tongue darted over his lower lip nervously, and he looked away a little shyly before answering with a frown, “I’m sorry, I’ve got this thing tonight.”

“Oh! of course!” she said, but she just couldn’t let this one go. “What about tomorrow?”

“I’m leaving tomorrow.”

Lex’s heart deflated as the last of her hope dissipated and she felt her shoulders slump in defeat.  The publicist came breezing into the room again and Lex took a step to the side, picking up her press packet.  Jensen suddenly reached forward with his hand and took hers, turning her back to face him.  He held onto it as he looked her in the eyes, “It was nice to meet you…” he said, his face full of boyish mischief.  “Surreal, but nice.”

His face burst into a dazzling smile again and he kept her hand in his a little longer.  Lex’s heart thumped extra hard against her ribs, her brain stunned into silence that he had repeated her own embarrassing words from before, transforming them somehow into a shiver inducing shared memory.  She was forced to let go, unable to say anything else, as the publicist ushered her out of the room.  Lex stared at the closed door forlornly, feeling the opportunity slipping away and once again cursing Mackey and her uselessness.  She turned away, feeling lost and confused and she glanced around the reporter filled room before heading for the door to the suite so she could go nurse her disappointment at home.

She was reaching for the handle when the publicist caught up to her again.  “Oh, just this way, and we can get you through the next ones.”

“The next what?” Lex asked, confused.

The blonde woman in the grey suit just indicated another door to an adjoining room and Lex walked through into another lushly decorated space, only this time, the man sitting in one of the chairs, leafing through a magazine, was… “Sam Winchester.”

The man turned his shaggy haired head towards them and stood up as the publicist introduced her and he took her hand in his impossibly large one.  Lex tilted her head back so she could look at him, towering above her.  No wonder Jensen looked short on the show.  “Tall,” she muttered and he smiled broadly.

“Jared.  But tall works too, I guess.”

He let go her hand and sat down again, Lex sitting down across from him.  He was wearing a grey suit with a salmon shirt, and Lex realized that somehow, this charade of being a reporter was biting her in the ass in a way she never in a million years would have predicted.

“So, what’s your first question?” he encouraged her, still smiling his boyish smile and she had no choice but to play along.

“So, Sam Winchester went through a lot in seasons one and two--”

“I died.  Yeah, I’d say that’s a lot,” he said, his foot bouncing on his knee.

“Yeah, how do you think that’s going to impact your character in the coming season?” Lex felt like hitting herself as she wondered how she got herself into this mess.  Jared didn’t seem to notice anything odd though, settling in to an explanation like he’d been asked that question a million times.

The fake interview went on for a couple more questions, the whole time Jared being boyishly cute and cracking jokes until the publicist came to fetch her again, shepherding her into another room, this time it was the cantankerous Uncle Bobby she was interviewing and she found him to be intelligent and good humoured.  He talked about his role as surrogate father to the Winchester boys.  He also talked about his amazement that his iconic phrases like “idjit” and “balls” were ever uttered by himself.  Then she ended up in another room, with a beautiful blonde woman called Katie who was playing the demon Ruby and would be semi-regular this season but couldn’t say if she was going to be good or bad for the Winchesters, they would just have to wait and see.  Lex thanked her and stood up to walk back out into the maze of suites she had been dragged through.

She glanced at the clock on the wall, and realized that she had been at the hotel, pretending to be a reporter for over an hour.  She was exhausted and had a mild headache from trying to come up with questions that didn’t sound completely moronic to these professionals.  She looked around and saw no sign of the publicist and she started walking towards the exit, hoping for a quiet, if belated, retreat.  She froze though when she heard someone call her name, “Ms Larsen!”

The grey clad woman came into view again and Lex groaned, “no more!” as she contemplated her chances of outrunning her in her sandals but the woman paid her no mind as she practically shoved her in through another door and left her right away.  It took a moment for Lex to realize that she was in the first room she had been shown to when she got there.  Standing in front of her, leaning his hands on the back of the sofa, his beige suit jacket draped beside him, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, was Jensen, looking as tired as she felt.  His hair was still styled, but a stray strand or two were hanging over his forehead making him look like a boy somehow, even with the shape of his muscular frame visible under his thin shirt.

He straightened up when he saw her and she took a step towards him, her mind blank from the unexpected surprise of seeing him.  He worried his lower lip with his teeth, adding to the boyish image and making her heart flutter dramatically as she greeted him again with a bemused “Hey,” that he returned.  Then, he cleared his throat.

“So…  that thing I had tonight, uh…  I’m not going.”  Lex just kept staring at him, at a loss for what to say.  After a moment, he continued, “You know, if uh…  If you still want to do something…”

Lex’s brain snapped back to reality: this was really happening.  An irrepressible smile plastered itself to her face and suddenly she wasn’t tired anymore. “Yes!” she answered, maybe a little over enthusiastically and she forced herself to calm down again while a smile lit up Jensen’s face.  “Of course, tonight is… oh crap! no.” Lex suddenly remembered something about Friday night, slapping her hand to her forehead in horror.  “It’s my little sister’s birthday.  We’re throwing her a party, no.” She tried to make her panicking mind come up with a solution.

“That’s okay,” Jensen said.

“No, it’s fine.  I’m sure I can get out of it,” Lex said, looking up at him.

He took a step closer to her, standing just a couple of feet away now, “No, I mean, it’s okay.  We can go to the party…  I can be your date, if you want.”

Lex’s eyebrows climbed up her forehead in surprise as she looked at his earnest face.  “You want to go with me…  to my little sister’s birthday party…” she said, more than a little skeptical.

“If it’s okay,” he finished, a shy smile on his face.

In a complete daze, she went to wait in the lobby while he changed into something more appropriate.  She paced anxiously along the edge of the rich blue-green rug lining the waiting area with its plush arm chairs and padded benches that her excited body would not let her sit in. Five, then ten minutes went by and she started to think that he wasn’t coming down, that he had changed his mind, and who could blame him?  As if he actually wanted to go to her sister’s birthday party.  She turned to leave, nearly walking out the lobby doors when she heard him call out her name.  She turned to face him as he strolled across the lobby dressed in a pair of stone washed jeans with tears at the knees, and a grey short sleeved Henley shirt with the buttons undone and holding what looked like a camera in a case in his hands.  If Lex had thought meeting him had been surreal, how was her brain supposed to interpret this?  This was really happening, she thought.  Looking up at him, she was flooded with a sense of well-being; she felt giddy and happy and at the same time in complete awe, that this actor…  this man, was choosing to accompany her to her best friend’s house, to celebrate her little sister Taylor’s birthday, the most ordinary of occasions.

⚡️


	4. Chapter 4

Lex walked up to the plum trimmed townhouse glancing subtly over her shoulder to see if the dream had disappeared while she wasn’t looking, but the tall, handsome Jensen was still there, standing at her shoulder, looking, of all things, timid.  “Are you sure about this?” she asked him, thinking of a million other things they could be doing that would be more interesting for him than a simple dinner with people he had never met. 

He gave her a smile and assured her everything was great, then reached around her to press on the doorbell.  The reaction inside was instant.  They stood and waited while she could distinctly hear Liz swearing and sounding like all Hell’s fury was running rampant in her kitchen.  “Could you just get the damn door?” Lex heard Liz yell, making her smile at her friend’s bluster.

A few seconds later, Dave, Liz’s husband, answered the door with a half smile hiding in his long red beard, “We’re experiencing a mild food crisis at the moment, but you’re more than…” Dave stopped talking as his grey-green eyes landed on Jensen standing just behind her.

Lex jumped in, trying to cover up the awkwardness, “Dave, this is Jensen.  Jensen, Dave.”

Dave seemed to recover quickly, easy-going as always, and he held out his hand to shake Jensen’s, like he’d done in the past with any of the men she’d brought around to meet her friends. He did however straighten up, squaring his shoulders and tucking in his gut a bit, and Lex smiled at the familiar response to meeting someone in better shape than him.  Dave was a security guard, and had the build for it, but he was just a hopeless teddy bear next to Jensen’s trim, muscular physique, and he clearly felt the need to impress.  They exchanged a quick, automatic, “nice to meet you,” then Dave stepped aside to let them in, raising one of his eyebrows at her, but sparing her any other comment for the moment.

Lex led the way into the kitchen/dining room/living room, Liz’s house much more open concept than her own cramped townhouse.  The short-haired brunette threw her a greeting while stirring something in a pan with one hand and fanning a nearly overflowing saucepan with the other, manic energy emanating from her short chubby frame.  A timer went off and she let out a frustrated curse again.  Lex laughed and Liz called her a bitch, making her laugh even more.

Jensen, unfamiliar with the rules, moved into the kitchen without hesitation, leaving Lex behind with Dave.  She was about to warn him about interfering with Liz’s process, but Dave held her back with a hand on her arm and a shake of his head.

“Can I help with anything?” asked Jensen, not knowing how close he was to being on the receiving end of one of Liz’s legendary thrashings.

Liz must have registered that this was a new voice because she turned to look at who spoke without chasing him out of the kitchen like she normally would have.  “Sorry, but no one’s allowe… Oh!” Her voice trailed off as her eyes found the source of the new voice, “Hey, sorry…  you know you look a lot li…”

“Liz!” Lex jumped in, “This is Jensen.”

“Okay…” Liz said, surprised and clearly dumbfounded.  She stretched her hand out and Jensen took it in his, “Nice to meet you…” she started in a half daze but suddenly the pan she had been fanning started to overflow and the stove top hissed and before Jensen could return the greeting, Liz shooed him out of the kitchen, returning to her cooking and her stressed-out mania.

He was looking a little flustered and Dave let out an amused laugh before slapping him on the shoulder like they’d been friends forever.  “Can I get you a beer, man?” Dave asked him.

He turned his eyes towards the fridge which was on the other side of the kitchen, past the short, terrifying person and he turned back to Dave with cocked eyebrows, “Is it safe?”

Lex and Dave laughed and he moved into the kitchen fearlessly towards the fridge, he even stopped to peck a kiss on Liz’s cheek as he moved past her, getting a grumbled insult in return to which he answered, “I love you too.”

Lex smiled at their antics, used to their silliness, and then turned to look at Jensen who was watching them too.  He looked down at her and quirked his lips when he noticed her eyes were on him.  She found herself laying her hand on his arm instinctively, but pulled away again quickly, not sure what was okay, and what was not, considering this was far from a normal date.  In a minute, Dave was back and handing Jensen an uncapped beer, tapping his own against it before taking a swallow.

The bell rang again, sending Liz into a flurry of nerves, “This was supposed to be done by now,” as whoever it was came straight through the door without waiting for it to be opened.  Lex’s little sister Taylor was already in the middle of talking, announcing her presence before she had rounded the hallway corner in her high heels, a grey wraparound dress with flowing short skirt like smoke, about a thousand bangles on her arms clanging together and a black slouch beanie covering her head, just her long dirty blonde bangs emerging from it and hiding half her face.  “Oh, my God.  You guys are NOT going to believe this.  I just read on this blog today that the guy who plays Dean on Supernatural is actually gay…  Like, can you imagine?”

Lex cringed at her little sister’s unwitting faux pas, glancing at Jensen who had turned to look at whoever was coming into the house.  “Yeah, I heard that one too…” he said, without batting an eye, “and no, I totally can’t.”

Taylor stopped dead in her tracks and she looked up at him, her eyes round like silver dollars.  Lex stepped in quickly, “Jensen, this is my little sister Taylor.  She’s a big fan of the show.”

“Right,” he answered, with a gracious smile, “Happy birthday, Taylor.”

“Oh my God! This is the best moment of my life ever, I love you, man, you’re basically a god.”

Taylor walked up to Jensen and grabbed his hand in both of hers, gushing in a stream of compliments and jabber about her favourite episodes.  Lex cringed, thinking back to the kid in the store who had wanted a photo with him and she turned to look at him.  On the surface, he was nodding and smiling, slipping in the occasional, “thanks,” when he could, but something flashed on his face, just momentarily, but Lex could swear it was distress.  She jumped in and pulled her sister away, giving her a hug as a pretext and then pulling her into the hallway and out of sight. “Calm down, okay?” she whispered to her sternly.

“Oh my God, Lex,” she whispered back trying to look through the entryway into the other room, “How?  Why?  …What the hell?”

Lex was spared the need to answer when the doorbell rang again and her friend Hayden strolled in through the door calling out a half-hearted, “Hello!”  The tall woman had her auburn hair in its customary ponytail and her grey pants and vest over a light blue shirt suggested she had come straight from work.  “There’s the birthday girl,” she said, tiredly, as she spotted Taylor and Lex in the hallway.  She walked up to them and kissed Taylor on the cheek.  “Happy birthday, Ty” she added then gave Taylor an oddly shaped wrapped present.  “I thought of you when I saw it, but feel free to not wear it or anything.”

“Thanks, Hayden!” she said, giving her a smile.

Hayden smiled back, more a grimace than a smile and then hugged Lex in greeting before heading into the main room to see who else was there.   “Liz, I’m raiding your liquor tonight,” Lex heard her exclaim and she frowned, worried about her friend.  Something always seemed to be going wrong with her.  “Oh, hello,” she said and Lex glanced at her sister, figuring Hayden had spotted Jensen.

They both walked back into the room, Taylor with a wide ear-to-ear grin under her hair.  Jensen and Dave were standing together, Jensen’s camera out of the bag.  Clearly, Dave had asked him about it, and Lex was a little sad that she hadn’t gotten the back story.

Hayden moved right up to him.  “You must be Lex’s date.  I’m Hayden,” she said moving in to kiss him on the cheek, holding on to his broad shoulders like he was just an ordinary Joe.  He smiled and frowned at the same time, looking perplexed and told her his name. “Jensen, that’s an unusual name.” She turned towards the kitchen and threw out a greeting to Liz, “What’s for eatin’?” she asked.

“Whatever I put on your plate,” she answered.

“Sounds good,” said Hayden.

She didn’t seem to have noticed that everyone was waiting for her to realize who Jensen was, and after a collective shrug, Dave walked towards a cupboard on the edge of the kitchen, pulling out a glass tumbler, “What’s your poison, Hayd?”

“Jack and Coke, if you got it.”

Dave busied himself preparing the drink.

“Is it alright with you guys if I take pictures?”

Everyone turned to look at Jensen and his awkward little half-smile and Lex could not imagine anyone saying no to it.  Dave started laughing, “I’ll bet Lex is thrilled about it! Right?  For once she won’t be the one hiding behind the lens.”

“Shut up, Dave,” Lex said, blushing.

Jensen gave her a curious tilt of the head, but she just waved it off.  Liz declared dinner ready to be served and Taylor scurried around, toppling precariously on her heels to set plates on the table, Dave following in her wake with one dish after another.  Lex left Jensen in the care of Hayden who was now properly armed with a drink and chatting him up while he adjusted his camera for the lighting.  Liz’s duties as chef over, she pulled Lex to the side on the pretext of getting the good utensils out of the buffet.

“What are you doing with him?  How did this happen?” Liz asked her, keeping her excited voice low.

“It’s a long story,” Lex answered, keeping an ear on Hayden and Jensen as they discussed their work.  “To be honest, I’m not really sure how this happened.”  She glanced back at Jensen, who was listening to Hayden go on about her job as an investment banker, and not a very good one.  Almost like he could feel her eyes on him, he looked up and gave her a smile and a wink, making her heart go into an excited tattoo and she felt her cheeks heat up.

“Wait,” said Liz, dissecting her face with her eyes, “you didn’t sleep with him, did you?”

Lex turned to look at her, shocked Liz would ask her that outright, “No!  Jesus, Liz.”

“Oh my God, you so did!”  Lex shushed her friend’s growing excitement and she lowered her voice again, “Holy crap!”

Lex rolled her eyes and grabbed the utensils from Liz’s hands to bring them to the table, just catching Jensen telling Hayden he’s an actor on television, making her smile again at her friend’s complete oblivion.  The dishes were all laid out on the kitchen table, Dave added one last chair so everyone could sit, and the table was ready for its guests

“Uh, sorry, Liz?” asked Jensen, putting his camera down on the coffee table in the living room.  “Where’s the washroom?”

“I’ll show you!” chimed in Taylor from the table and she grabbed Jensen’s hand again, pulling him into the hallway.

He turned his head towards Lex, his eyes wide, his mouth stretched in mock pain and she shook her head apologetically.  When he was out of sight, she walked over to where he had put down the camera, curious about what he was using.  She was impressed to find it was a brand new digital Nikon, clearly this picture taking was something he did a lot if he had invested in such a nice camera.  She put it back down on the table, resisting the urge to scroll through the pictures on the SD card, mindful of his privacy.

“He seems nice, Lex,” chimed in Hayden, polishing off her Jack and Coke, “Then again, you always seem to date nice guys.  Does he have a brother?”  Everyone turned to look at her and Taylor walked back into the room looking sheepish.

“I actually followed him into the washroom,” Lex gave her a disapproving look, “What Lex? I’m sorry but seriously, what the hell are you doing with Jensen Ackles?”

“Ackles… why does that sound familiar?” asked Hayden, confused.

“You see his name on TV every week, dummy,” said Liz, directly, “He’s on Supernatural.”

“What?” Hayden said, still a little lost and then her face transformed as she realized who she had been talking to, “What! No!  Oh no…  Oh God, I must’ve sounded so stupid!”

Everyone suddenly burst out laughing in a combination of hilarity at Hayden’s embarrassment and nerves.  Lex shushed them all, worried Jensen would be back any second, “Can we talk about this later, guys?  Seriously, get it together.”  But everyone ignored her, pulling a reluctant smile from her as their giddy good cheer continued.

⚡️

She watched, in a strange dream fog, as her friends – family – accepted Jensen like he was one of their own.  After the initial kerfuffle of seat assignment, which somehow landed her sitting across the round table from her date, while Dave sat on one side of him and her little sister claimed his other because it was her birthday, everyone settled into their more natural rhythm.  Taylor took on the spotlight like she always did, recounting the stories of her week, lacing the events with exaggeration and humour, making everyone laugh, including Hayden who always took the longest to shed her week’s frustrations, even helped along by another Jack and Coke or two, gladly supplied by Dave.  He had latched on to Jensen the most naturally, maybe just relieved to not be the only man at the table like he so often was when the group got together at his house.  Lex caught them discussing music and martial arts, Jensen revealing that he did most of the fight scenes in the show himself with Jared.  Liz had to put her foot down when Dave suggested they go out back and spar after dinner, making Lex choke on her wine when she slipped in the comment about not being responsible for screwing up Jensen’s perfect face.

Lex enjoyed watching him as he relaxed with the group, his smiles growing in frequency and his quiet laughter making his shoulders shake even as he occasionally raised his camera and snapped a candid photo here and there, showing the pictures on the digital viewer to Taylor who insisted excitedly every time.  She, of course, demanded he take a picture with her and he gracefully turned the camera around and held it at arm’s length while she leaned back against him looking up at the objective with a smile.

When Ty requested stories from on set, he gladly obliged too, recounting some of the antics he and Jared get up to while filming, his gestures and facial expressions making everyone laugh.  Hayden was most surprised that Jared was such a trickster, because his character was so serious.  Jensen was quick to dispel it though and Lex could confirm, telling the group about her encounter with him earlier that day and his good humour and jokes.  Lex almost wished she hadn’t said anything though, because the confession that she had actually met a few of the cast sent everyone in another volley of “what the hell?”s and “how?”s that she just waved off, because how could she even begin to tell that story?

Soon, dinner was winding down and they polished off their pieces of birthday cake, Liz outdoing herself with a seven-layer rainbow cake that Lex was sure would have left overs until Christmas.  Taylor opened her gift from Hayden, which turned out to be a rainbow felt top hat that flopped around ridiculously, but instantly became her favourite possession in the world when Jensen grabbed it and perched it on his head comically.  He turned his head towards Lex catching her watching him and he smiled at her tenderly.

She was suddenly overtaken by the selfish desire to not share him with her friends and family anymore, and she cocked her head towards the exit, silently asking if he was ready to go.  He smiled and nodded and Lex stood up, telling everyone that they were going to take off.  Jensen returned the rainbow hat to Taylor with a last happy birthday and a kiss on her forehead that nearly turned her sister into a puddle of joy.

Goodbye kisses and hugs all around, Dave pulling Jensen in for a bro hug and shoulder slap, Lex and Jensen finally managed to leave the house, standing on the front porch a moment, breathing in the subtle scent of jasmine from one of the neighbouring gardens.  They started down the steps when a sudden loud chorus of cheers and laughter and excited yells came from the house behind them.

Lex looked at Jensen awkwardly, “They always do that when I leave,” she said, trying to sound nonchalant and he nodded at her with a smile.  They started up the street towards the main artery of Nowhere Ville, taking slow strides, enjoying the warm evening breeze since the car wasn’t due to pick up Jensen until midnight.  He fiddled with his camera again, taking a few nighttime pictures of the neighbourhood.

“I’m sorry about Ty’s behaviour,” Lex said, “She’s always a bit excited, but I didn’t think she’d go all crazy like that.”

“No, it’s okay,” he responded, giving her a little smile, “She’s sweet.”

“I hope you weren’t insulted by what she said when she came in.”

“The gay thing?  Don’t worry, I’ve heard a lot worse.  Those rumours have been going around since I was on Days of Our Lives.  Just because I choose to keep my private life…  private, people assume it’s because I’m a closet case.  I don’t know why people go all nuts about it though.”

Lex frowned, trying to imagine living her life under a microscope, “Don’t take it personally.  She’s always thrilled when she finds out celebrities are gay, makes her feel less isolated.  You should’ve seen her when Neil Patrick Harris came out last year.”

“Why would… Oh!” he said, “Your sister’s gay?”  Lex smiled at him to confirm and he nodded his head, then shrugged.

“Anyways, I hope that wasn’t too boring for you.  I’m sure you’re used to much more elaborate parties.”

He chuckled, hanging his camera by the strap on his shoulder and putting his hands in his jeans pockets while they strolled side-by-side, “Actually, it was really nice.  Was kinda like being back home in Texas.”

“What’s that like?  Do you have any brothers or sisters?” she asked, curious to find out more about him.

“One of each.  Big brother, and little sister.  She was on the show last year, just as an extra, but was a lot of fun.  I don’t get to spend a lot of time with them, between shooting up in Vancouver and press events, and now they’ve added fan conventions.  I mean, I’m happy the show is doing well, but I miss them, you know?”  He turned to look at her, “What about you?”

“What about me?  I think you’ve met everyone I know,” she said with a shy laugh.

“What about your parents?”

“My parents passed away a while back.  My mom got breast cancer when I was just a kid, Ty was barely out of diapers and my dad had a heart attack a few years ago.  It’s just me and Ty now.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, sounding genuinely sad.

Lex assured him that it was fine and they walked on in silence for a little.  They were coming up to the main road, and on their left, the summer twinkle lights of the Oasis were illuminating the quiet park, competing with the blueish July moonlight.  Jensen pointed to it, taking out his camera again, and they headed in through the main entrance, following the footpath through the semi-darkness, the light breeze ruffling the leaves on the trees and the mixed scents of the large pond and wild flower gardens filled their noses pleasantly.  He snapped a couple of pictures: the vast expanse of the park was only lit up along the footpaths by strings of lights that looked like white paper lanterns and glowed their way up to a large wooden gazebo with twinkle lights wrapped all around it.  All the noises of the City were dampened in the park somehow, making it feel like they were deep in the countryside, as opposed to surrounded by a busy city.  They stepped off the main path, Lex leading the way to her favourite spot.

“It’s so beautiful here,” Jensen said, in awe, putting the camera down, “So peaceful.”

“Yeah, I like to come here a lot, especially at night like this, just to think and be calm.”

“I can see why.”

They were standing on the edge of the pond, the quiet water reflecting the three-quarter moon, the breeze blowing through the reeds musically and the frogs and crickets chirping to themselves.  Lex closed her eyes and breathed in the fresh air, filling herself up with serenity, feeling so completely happy, sharing this moment with him.  She heard the click of the shutter and opened her eyes to see Jensen lowering the camera that had been aimed at her.  She felt instantly shy, torn between her dislike of being photographed and her amazement that he would want to photograph her.

He was staring at her with a hint of a smile and he slung the camera over his shoulder again and took a step towards her.  His hand came up and brushed through the long hair framing her face and her heart jumped into action, the blood beating through her veins like fire.  He brought up his other hand to hold the side of her neck as he leaned down and kissed her waiting lips.  She closed her eyes, savouring the press of his mouth on hers and she lay her hands on his arms, to keep herself steady, her legs suddenly Jell-O again.

He pulled away, his hands still cradling her face and Lex opened her eyes slowly, looking up at his moonlit face making his eyes grey in the colourless light, her breath catching in her chest, her mind urging her to re-close the gap.

“You’re not going to apologize again, are you?” she asked him, breathlessly.

Jensen’s mouth stretched into a broad smile, his teeth glistening in the semi-darkness, “No,” he said.

“Good.  Then I won’t apologize for this.”

Lex wrapped her arms around his neck, and kissed him again, stretching onto her toes, her body pressed up against him.  His hands settled on her waist and back, holding her close as he opened his mouth to deepen the kiss, Lex closing her lips again on his full lower one.  She could keep kissing his lips forever, she thought as she once more opened and closed her lips against his and she caught the scent of him, that subtle earthy smell.  When they pulled apart again, Lex’s blood was rushing in her ears and she felt her skin energized like she was wrapped in static energy.  She reluctantly took a step back, putting a little space between them so she could catch her breath.

“Are you doing anything tomorrow?” Jensen asked her, his voice soft like the breeze.

“I thought you were leaving tomorrow,” she said, confused.

“I was.”

Lex tilted her head to the side, looking at him pensively, “But, not anymore?”

Jensen’s smile lit up his face again, and he took her hand in his as they continued their stroll around the Oasis; the frogs and the crickets, the breeze and the flowers, the moon and the lanterns and his hand in hers all conspiring to make this the most perfect moment of her life.

⚡️


	5. Chapter 5

“Damnit Mackey!” Lex exclaimed in a flurry of nerves and excitement as she ran around the house in her bra and underwear, “Are you sure you haven’t seen it?”

“I tell you what I’m seeing, a whole lot of you in your Alans, that’s what.”

“Oh, for God’s sake!” Lex exclaimed again and started back up the stairs to hunt through her closet again.

“Are you sure you want to go with those knickers?  They don’t really go with the brassiere.”

Lex stopped halfway up the stairs and crouched down below the ceiling to glance at Mackey who was still lying on the couch leafing through a magazine in a pair of bright fuchsia skinny jeans and a blue T-shirt that read “MONEY” all in caps with a picture of a panda underneath.  That she had anything to say at all surprised her, but looking down at herself, she figured the crazy roommate might have a point.  She ran back into her room.

⚡️

Lex and Jensen left the cinema, both feeling giddy.  The movie had been terrible, but good company can make anything fun, and two hours, un-eaten popcorn and many shushes later, Lex felt like a teenager again emerging from the theatre’s darkness.  They strolled down the crowded Saturday sidewalks of the City side-by-side, talking casually about the whole experience, Jensen looking boyishly charming in his dark jeans and black dress shirt, sleeves rolled up to his elbows as always, top two buttons undone.  Lex had settled on a sea green and blue paisley tea dress with strappy black heels, and matching black bra and panties… not that they mattered in the grand scheme of things.

They walked into a busy City restaurant, Jensen’s status getting them a table in a semi-private nook almost right away and they sat facing each other, no family and friends to distract them from the other.  Lex was almost hypnotized by his gaze as they talked about nothing and everything, from their favourite music to hopes and dreams.

“I’m not complicated,” he said, swirling his wine glass thoughtfully, “A home, a family one day maybe.  Work,” he said with a smile.

“I think you’re pretty well set for work with the show, don’t you?  It’s not like they can kill Dean,” Lex said, jokingly, trying to reassure him.

“I dunno.  It’s a fickle business.  I mean who knows, the show could get cancelled, it happens.  And with changing networks, we’re lucky they decided to keep the show at all.”

Lex looked at him for a minute, his face serious as he took a sip from his glass, “Naw,” she said, “They can’t cancel it.  You’ll see, you’re gonna be swamped in work for the next decade.”

With a laugh, Jensen said, “Cheers,” and they clinked their glasses together and took a sip.  “What about you,” he asked, sitting back in his chair.  “What does Alexa Larsen dream about?”

“Oh… You mean other than you?” she threw out, the wine playing on her inhibitions.

Jensen smiled broadly and nodded, “Yeah.  Other than me.”

Lex put her glass down on the table and looked at her darkened reflection in the decorative window pane beside her, “I don’t know.  I thought I had it all figured out, you know?  I had a man I was going to marry, a house in a beautiful neighbourhood.  We even had a couple of dogs,” she said with a sad smile.

“So, what happened?”

Lex looked up at him, and the care in his face – he was so near perfection it almost hurt.  She reached for her glass and took another sip of wine.  “Nothing.  We woke up one morning, and he just didn’t love me anymore.  He moved into the office at the time, Mackey’s room now, and we tried to make it work until we could sell the house, but…  Let’s just say it wasn’t pretty.  He moved out, took the dogs and I inherited Mackey.”

“How is that possible?” he asked quietly.

Lex looked up at him, frowning, “How is what possible?  I put an ad in the paper and then Mackey happened.”

Jensen chuckled under his breath, then looked up at her again, “No, how could someone just stop loving you?”

Lex could feel the heat of the blush on her cheeks and she fanned herself with her hand dramatically, “Oh boy, I think the wine is going to your head.”

With a shy smile, Jensen said, “Maybe,” and they fell quiet, each contemplating the other.

Loud raucous peels of laughter suddenly erupted from the large table behind Jensen and they both snapped out of their trance-like state.  A familiar name caught their attention and Lex found herself tuning in to what the girls were talking about.

“Yeah, the panel was pretty interesting.  Sucks that it didn’t last longer though.  I could listen to that Jensen talk all day,” one of the girls was saying.

Jensen raised his eyebrows and pulled the corners of his mouth down in an appreciative way, Lex smiling at his cockiness.

“Sucks that he wasn’t at the autograph signing though, I would’ve liked to have gotten that close,” another voice said, this time Jensen making an exaggerated apologetic face.  Lex guessed that he had skipped out on that part of the convention to go catch a movie with her and she narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips in mock disappointment.

“I know, just a chance to stand that close and look into those eyes of his.  Wow.”

“Forget his eyes, have you seen his ass?  I’d totally smack that perfect butt.  I bet you can bounce a penny off it.”

“I know what I’d like to do to him… all… night… long.  The man is walking, talking sex.”

The table exploded into another loud chorus of laughter and appreciative whoops and Lex noticed Jensen looking a little less cheerful than before, his smile not as quick and his eyes staring vacantly ahead.

“You know he’s gay, right?” chimed in a new voice and Jensen shifted uncomfortably again while the table exploded in a cacophony of denial.  “No, it’s true!  He had a thing with one of his co-stars on Days of Our Lives.  Everyone knew about it.”

“Know what I heard?  I heard that the two of them are a couple.”

“Who?”

“Jensen and Jared, duh.  You can see the sexual tension on screen.”

“What? No!  Ah, that is all sorts of wrong.”

“Who do you think gives it?  Know what?  With those pretty peepers of his, I bet you Jensen takes it.”

The girls exploded in cackles and Lex couldn’t take another second of Jensen’s embarrassed discomfort.  “That’s enough,” she said standing up from their table.

“No, Lex, come on.  It’s not worth it,” he said, shaking his head.  “Let’s just go.”

Lex was determined though and she walked around the decorative wall of the nook to face the table of rude women.  There were six of them all looking around the same age, in their mid-twenties.  “You should all be ashamed of yourselves!” she started.

“Who the hell are you?” one of the women asked, eyeing her – a pretty blonde with perfect curls, fancy makeup and a little black dress.

“Doesn’t matter who I am.  Do you realize how rude you’re being?  You’re talking about a real person.  A person who has feelings.  And you’re talking about him like he’s nothing more than a toy for your pleasure.  You know nothing about him.  What’s wrong with you?”

The girls at the table glanced around at each other in utter disbelief.  The blonde spoke up again, “Yeah?  What’s wrong with you?  You think you’re my mother or something?”

The table burst out laughing again and Lex felt the flush in her cheeks and the anger boil her blood.  Suddenly, they stopped, struck dumb, all of them staring at something right behind her, their jaws slack and their eyes round.  Lex didn’t understand until she felt an arm wrap around her waist.

“I’m sorry,” said Jensen’s rich voice just above her ear, “My friend’s a little sensitive about stuff like this.  I’m sure y’all didn’t mean any disrespect…” he paused and Lex turned her head slightly towards him as he continued. “Sometimes mouths forget to check with the brain before regurgitating bull crap.  Goodnight ladies.”

Before any of them could react, he pulled Lex away and guided her out the restaurant gently.  Back out on the sidewalk, Lex let out her irritation in a growl as they walked away, heading back towards the hotel.

“Aaah!  Can you believe them?” Lex shook her head angrily, “I just wanna go back there and smack their stupid perfect faces.”  Lex raged on as they walked the two blocks of busy City street.  Jensen didn’t make a sound and she stopped talking, turning to look at him.  He was walking with his hands in his pockets staring at the ground in front of him looking thoroughly unhappy.  “Jensen?  Are you okay?” she asked him, laying a hand on his upper arm.

“Yeah,” he said, unconvincingly.  “I shouldn’t’ve done that.  It was stupid and impulsive.  And tomorrow, there’ll be a bunch of ‘Tweets’ or whatever about what a rude jackass I am.”

“What?  Are you kidding me?  They’re the ones…”  Lex grabbed his arm and turned him towards her, forcing him to look at her.  “They’re the ones who were being rude.  Listen!” She insisted tugging on his arm, “Who cares what they say?  It’s like those stupid rumours… just a load of succotash!”

Jensen’s face suddenly split into a goofy grin and Lex stopped cold, confused, but not for long.  “Did you just say ‘succotash’?  ‘Cause that’s friggin’ adorable.”

Lex’s eyes opened wide and she swallowed forcefully, “What? No!”  She could feel her cheeks heat up and she turned away, knowing she was blushing.

Jensen started laughing, a deep, quiet chuckle that warmed her to her toes.  She looked back up at him just as he turned towards her, laying his hand on her neck, his thumb sweeping her cheek, his other hand coming up to cradle the other side of her face and neck.  Her breath hitched in her chest as he looked at her, the warmth in his green eyes smouldering as he grew serious again, just looking at her.

“What are you doing with me?” The question that had been bouncing around in Lex’s head since that first kiss just slipped out and she waited, terrified of his answer.

His voice was rough as he said, “I don’t know.”  He started to lean in towards her when suddenly he stopped, just a breath away from kissing her, and he straightened up again, letting go of her face and taking a step back, glancing around himself at the busy pedestrian traffic, outside the City Hilton, on a Saturday night.  He looked at her again, and she was floundering, unable to interpret his answer, or his reaction, or her own.  What did all this mean?  What could it possibly be other than a momentary fling?  If it was even that at all.  What could he possibly see in her?

Jensen glanced at the hotel lobby entrance and back towards her.  “Do you want to come up?” he asked her, looking unsure.

Lex’s brain was trying to understand what he was asking her, again.  Was he asking her up so they could talk without the fear of prying eyes? Or was he done talking?  Lex couldn’t deny the rush of blood at the thought of being alone with him in a hotel room, but she forced herself to remember all the reasons that she didn’t believe in the whole casual sex thing.  And then there was the idea of the press and the fans, and those words again, _“probably shouldn’t… tell anyone about… this.”_

“I don’t know if I should, Jensen.  Seems like there are a lot of reasons why I shouldn’t.”

He looked down at his feet, “Yeah, there are those.”  He looked at the hotel lobby again through the double glass doors, and then at her and his eyes were wide, his mouth slack.  “Do you wanna come up?”

How to interpret his face?  He was looking so hopeful, and at the same time she could swear he looked scared, insecure.  What would a man like Jensen have to be insecure about?  Her heart was pounding in her chest, looking at the confusion and all her arguments went flying out the window.  “Yes,” she found herself saying, breathlessly.

Jensen glanced at the hotel lobby again, “Give me five minutes,” he told her and then headed in through the hotel doors.

Lex tried to steady her wild pulse, but was completely unable to as she thought about being alone with him, in a room, with a bed…  She was suddenly very glad her bra and undies matched after all.

⚡️

Lex raised her closed fist and rapped it against the suite door.  She figured that after five minutes her nerves would have settled, but she was practically humming with nervous anticipation.  The door opened and her heart thumped against her ribs wildly as she walked past Jensen and into the room.  He closed the door behind her and she turned to face him, and as he stepped towards her she walked straight into his arms, wrapping hers around his shoulders.  She pressed her lips against his, running one hand in the short soft hair at the back of his head.  She pulled her mouth away, opening her eyes to look at him.

“Mmmm,” she hummed, “I really like doing that.”

“You have to go,” he said quickly, putting his hands on her shoulders and gently pushing her away from him.

Lex stepped back, confused and hurt.  “Wait… What?”

Suddenly, she heard a woman’s voice from the next room calling out to him, sounding annoyed.  “Jay!  Will you get Jared off my case, already?”  Lex stiffened and looked at him, his face halfway between pain and panic as he looked back at her.  He opened his mouth to say something, but the mystery woman rounded the corner of the entrance in an annoyed huff, her needle thin stilettos sinking into the carpet, her long legs accentuated by black skinny jeans, glittering with embedded gems, her torso barely covered by a halter top.  Lex suddenly felt very aware of her own imperfect body.  The woman stopped dead in her tracks seeing Lex standing beside Jensen and her mascara lined eyes widened in surprise and anger.  “Who the hell is she?” she cried, her voice a strident shrill like she clearly didn’t care that anyone in the next rooms could hear.

From around the corner came the tall, shaggy haired Jared in jeans and an open short sleeved white shirt over a navy-blue t-shirt.  His eyes quickly assessed the disaster in the making in the entrance while Jensen told the woman, Tania, to calm down with an irritated growl.  She was still yelling, repeating her question and gesticulating fiercely.  Lex was standing there like a deer in headlights, completely useless as her brain tried to comprehend what was happening.

Jared took one look at Jensen and his whole face went from serious to light and cheerful, a wide grin going from ear to ear.

“Hey, babe!” he called out cheerfully and everyone turned to look at him.  He strolled over to stand beside Lex and wrapped his arm around her shoulders tucking her against his side.  “Ready to go, sweetheart?”

Jensen looked from Jared to her and he had that same pained expression, panic in his eyes.  He looked like he wanted to say something.

“Oh!  She’s with you?” Tania asked pointing rudely at Lex, making her look away anxiously.

“Yeah!  I gave her Jensen’s room number by mistake I guess,” he said sheepishly.

Tania crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow skeptically, “By mistake huh?  Your jerk ass was probably just trying to piss me off.”

“Tania,” Jensen said, pursing his lips in annoyance.

She turned to look at him and her body language changed, shedding the anger like a silk bathrobe and stepping up to him, wrapping her arms around his neck.  “Oh, Jay.  I knew she was nobody.”  Lex tried to turn away, feeling nauseous as the woman pressed herself against him and kissed him, but her eyes were glued to his face like a train wreck.

“Okay, well we’re gonna let you guys get your freak on.  Jay, call me later, man.”

Jared turned around, practically carrying Lex out of the room with him: his arm still holding on to her, as he opened the suite door and stepped out into the hallway.  The door closed behind them and Lex stepped away from the tall man’s hold.  She was struggling with her disappointment while quietly berating herself for not expecting this.  Of course he had a woman in his life, how naïve was she?  He had played her, plain and simple.  A bitter taste flooded her mouth and she choked it down with difficulty, feeling her eyes begin to prickle.

“So, you’re Jay’s mystery girl,” Jared said appraisingly from behind her.  “I never would have thought that he would fall for someone from the press.”

She startled: she somehow had managed to forget the giant’s presence. She turned to look at him, his eyes looking her over, curiosity in his facial expression.  He had that same genuine kindness about him as Jensen did, and she found herself stepping back, starting to wonder what it was with these actors and their deceiving charm.

“I have to go,” she said, a lump in her throat and she left him standing there as she headed down the hallway to the elevator.

⚡️

“What’s wrong, Lexie?  Come on, tell Mack what ails you.”

“I met the perfect guy Mackey,”

“This is about…” she nodded towards the television, where Supernatural had been playing on a loop for days.

“I’m in love with him.  It makes no sense, I barely know the guy.  But… And I can’t have him.  I feel like I’ve been sucked empty.”

They sat in silence for a little while, then Mackey suddenly exclaimed, “Well, I know just the cure!  Sex.  Massive amounts of sex.  I know a few blokes.  When these guys are done you won’t even remember What’s-His-Name-Pretty-Boy.”

Tania’s face suddenly appeared on the screen, startling Lex and she hit the power button on the remote.  She sat staring at her own reflection in the dark television and then stood up from the couch, wrapping her long wool shall around her and heading for the stairs.

“No thanks, Mackey.”

⚡️

“You didn’t know he was seeing someone?” asked Liz from across the table.

Luke’s restaurant was only half full, as usual, when the girls got together for their weekly dinner.  Lex didn’t feel like being there particularly, but Mackey had ratted her out to Taylor and her little pain in the ass sister wouldn’t take no for an answer, so there she was, staring dejectedly towards the front windows, having told her persistent friends about the hotel.  She turned to look at Liz and shook her head no, before looking down at her hands in her lap.

“I can’t believe what an asshole he is!” exclaimed Taylor

“He’s not an asshole,” Lex said, dejectedly, wrapping her arms around her middle, “It’s my own fault for misreading the situation.”

“That’s total B.S.!” Taylor exclaimed loudly, Hayden shushing her, “He kissed you, Lex.”

Lex looked away again, feeling her eyes prickling and wishing she was back home wrapped in her blankets.  Liz put a hand on her arm comfortingly.  “We just need to take your mind off him.  Dave knows a few people.  I’m sure we can find you a good guy.”

Lex looked at her with a huff, “Oh God,” she said, “Now you sound like Mack.”

⚡️

If Lex could say anything about her friends, it was that they meant what they said, but best intentions aside, she really wished they’d leave her be. It was a parade of weekly dates with a spectrum of men that somehow kept showing up for dinner on Friday nights.  One after the other, they repeated the same questions, dancing the dating dance: So, what do you do?  What kind of music do you listen to?  Do you have any hobbies?  The answers were as eclectic as the men themselves that somehow Dave kept managing to find: this seemingly never-ending line of men who apparently wanted to go on blind dates with his wife’s depressed best friend.  Lex figured by the fifth one that he was walking around with a picture of her and bribing whatever poor guy he happened to cross paths with.  They all ended the same way too: a farewell kiss on the cheek and a promise to do it again sometime.  A promise Lex had absolutely no inclination to follow through with.

It didn’t seem to matter that some of these men were down right perfect for her.  It seemed, in fact, like the more perfect they were, the more miserable she was.  It wasn’t even as though she was actively comparing them to Jensen, she wasn’t.  It didn’t matter what they looked like or what they talked about, what was missing was that spark she had felt, that tingling whenever he appeared, or took her hand… or kissed her.  But none of that was real, she reminded herself angrily.  He had been acting all along.  She had fallen for a con artist and she didn’t know how to pick herself up again.

Lex let out a whining moan like she was in pain and curled her legs under her on the soft microfiber couch, sitting in Liz’s living room while she and Dave put away the leftovers and washed up.

“What’s wrong, sweetie?” called out Liz from the kitchen.

Lex toppled over and buried her face in one of the couch’s throw pillows.  Liz came over and sat on the armrest beside her, putting an arm on her shoulder.

“I’m screwed, Liz,” she mumbled into the pillow.

“Don’t say that,” she said and Lex turned her head to see Dave coming to sit in one of the armchairs with them.

“You’re just still not over You-Know-Who,” he said.

Lex raised her head and looked at him perplexed, “Wait… When did I date Voldemort?”  Dave gasped and shushed her and started laughing.  Lex gave a half-hearted laugh too, smiling at him.  “Dumbass,” she said affectionately.

Liz patted her hair as she sat up again, “I know it’s hard, sweetie.  But it’ll get better.”

“Urgh, really Liz?  With the life advice crap now?” Liz flipped her off and they both smiled.  Lex sat up again, feeling the momentary good mood brought on by laughing with her friends just slide off her like ooze.  She sighed looking out the darkened window.  “I don’t think you two realize how lucky you are.  I’ve had, what… two guys that I fell for?  One guy was a total ass who tugged me along for three years until something better popped up and the other one, married my best friend.”

She wrapped her arms around her knees and dropped her chin on them feeling close to tears again.  Dave leaned forward in his seat, putting his arms on his knees and catching her eye.  “He still loves you, though.”

Lex huffed at him, “Yeah, ‘cause being in the friend zone is the most awesome thing in the world.”

Everyone in the room fell silent, all words of comfort exhausted and Liz scooted down next to her and wrapped her arms around her shoulders.  “You wanna stay here tonight?”

Lex gave her a small half-smile, “May as well, I guess.  It’s not like anyone’s waiting for me back home.  Except for a strange girl who’s probably busy rummaging through my stuff anyways.”

Liz and Dave moved off towards their room, Liz coming back quickly to leave Lex some of her pyjamas so she’d be more comfortable to sleep.  Lex changed quickly and then settled on the living room couch, wrapping the throw blanket around herself and gazing out the window at the gently swaying branches of the reddening maple lit up by twinkle lights that looked like they were clinging to the last vestiges of summer.

⚡️


	6. Chapter 6

The next day dawned grey and rainy and Lex walked home with the sound of the drops pattering against her umbrella.  She rushed inside and straight into the shower to warm up, emerging half an hour later wrapped in a towel and drying her hair with another.  Today was going to be a lazy Saturday.  She slipped on a pair of black leggings and an oversized off-white cable-knit sweater and curled up on the couch in the living room, enjoying the quiet in the house.  She wasn’t sure where Mackey was, out or asleep, but the absence of her eccentric energy allowed Lex to relax and immerse herself in the book she had just bought, finding relief from her sorrows between its pages.

Hours and a few chapters later, Lex was pulled from the magical world of the Edema Ruh when the doorbell rang.  Lex startled out of her concentration, reluctantly returning to the real world and stretched her neck to try and see out the window at who could be darkening her doorstep.  There was a black car parked out front, but she didn’t recognize it.  The rain was still falling hard, the world outside the window washed out with grey light, but she could not see who was at the door.

Reluctantly, Lex threw off the woven throw blanket she had tucked around her legs and stood up, padding barefoot into the hall.  She pulled the door open and her brain just could not comprehend the signals her eyes were sending even as her heart leaped straight into her throat like a puppy excited to see its master after a long day.

“Jensen?” she said as he stood on the steps, looking half drowned, “What are you doing?”

The glimpses of distress and panic she had seen on his face those few months past were nothing compared to the turmoil she saw now, as he opened his mouth to speak, “I don’t know…  I…” His voice was rough and the sound of it pulled at her gut like a lifeline.

Lex stared at him as the rain came down on his shoulders and she was torn between her experience the last time she had seen him and the worry growing in her stomach.  She looked at his face again and made a decision.  She reached forward through the doorway and grabbed his wrist.  “Would you get in here?  You’ll catch your death, dumbass.”

He didn’t resist her as she pulled him inside and closed the door behind them.  She looked him over from head to toe, taking in his wet jeans and black and grey plaid shirt open over a t-shirt.  He had crossed his arms over his chest looking absolutely miserable.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “I don’t know…  I…  I saw the sign for the City and…  I shouldn’t be here.”  He tried to move past her towards the closed door, but Lex grabbed hold of his shoulders and stepped in his path.  His shirt was cold and wet and she could swear he was trembling.

“Na uh,” she said, shaking her head like she was talking to a child.  “You’re not going anywhere like this.  Take your shoes off.”

He stuck his toes against the heels of his shoes one after the other and took them off while she reached up and pulled his wet over-shirt down his arms, the fabric catching on his skin so she had to smooth it off.  She suppressed the little flip her stomach tried to do standing so close to him, focusing her mind instead on what he needed, and that was not a pissed off, unrequited love sufferer.  She hung his shirt on the coat rack pegs by the door and turned back to look at him.  He was definitely shaking now.  She took his hand again and pulled him up the stairs and straight into the bathroom.

“Take a hot shower and warm up.  Then we can talk, okay?”

He nodded his head, looking as sad as she’d ever seen him look on the show.  Lex forced herself out the door as he pulled his shirt over his head like a second skin and she closed the door behind her.  She took deep steadying breaths, her brain trying to wrap her head around his sudden appearance and the effect he had on her beating heart and rushing blood.  Then, seemingly out of nowhere, a calmness swept through her like a soothing breeze and her stress and worry just melted off her, shedding like an old skin.  She frowned, wondering briefly about her suddenly peaceful state, but chose to ignore it so she could focus on getting him what he needed.

She walked into her room and opened the double closet doors, rummaging through the clothes and moving things around until she found the bag of things that used to belong to her ex.  She pulled out the black jogging pants and the zip up hoodie that he had left behind along with a few odds and ends and headed back to the washroom.

She knocked on the door and listened, hearing the sound of the water running in the shower and waiting for his acknowledgement.  She pushed open the door when it came.  “I found you some clothes you can wear,” she said, trying and failing to keep her eyes away from the steaming shower curtain, and the outline of his broad shoulders, back lit as they were by the little window set in the wall beside him as he leaned into the shower jets, letting the water run down his head and back.  She swallowed hard and put the clothes down on the counter by the sink glancing around at his wet clothes on the floor.

“Thank you, Lex,” she heard coming from behind the curtain.

“No problem,” she answered as she picked up his wet clothes.  “I’ll be downstairs.”

She walked out again, careful to pull the door closed behind her.  She turned to head down the stairs but was startled by Mackey’s sudden appearance lounging against the hallway wall eating cereal.

“Am I to understand,” she said, “that there is currently a naked six-foot-one god in our Eiffel Tower?”

Lex gave her an annoyed glare, “Mackey, just go away!  Don’t bother him, okay?”

“Good thinking there…  stealing his clobber.  But you sure you don’t want to get back in there…  give his naughty bits a little tug?”

“Oh God, Mackey!” Lex said, moving away from the door and heading down the stairs.

“D’you mind if I have a go, then?”

“Seriously!” Lex burst out, turning around in the stairs and glaring at her through the banister rails.  “Can you just, clear out for a while?”

“Oh!  I get it,” she said, pushing away from the wall with a wink, “Clever minx.  You want some alone time.  Well, no worries!  I’ll leave you on your Todd.”

Mackey moved off to her room and disappeared hopefully, Lex thought to herself, to get dressed and get out.  Lex frowned at the closed door a little longer then made her way down the stairs and into the kitchen, pulling Jensen’s wallet, keys and cell phone out of his pants and leaving them on the table before opening the door to the basement to go put his clothes in the dryer.

When she came back upstairs, she moved into the kitchen to make a fresh pot of coffee, thinking he might appreciate the warm liquid.  She leaned back against the counter while the coffee maker popped and burbled.  She thought about his sudden reappearance in her house and wondered at the circumstances that drove him there.  It was so out of the blue.  Three months with no call, no sign of life, nothing but that lingering image of that woman pressed against him, her lips on his.

Lex startled out of her thoughts as he walked into the kitchen and she caught herself staring at him, dressed in her ex’s clothes that somehow fit him much better than they ever did said ex; the jogging pants were riding low on his hips, a line of skin visible between them and the hoodie zipped not quite to the top, his damp hair sticking up in places and falling over his forehead messily.  He pushed up the sleeves, looking much more composed than before, that wide-eyed panic dissipated.  She looked away and cleared her throat, “Did you want some coffee?”

“Yeah, that’d be great, thanks.”

She poured him a cup, and they danced the dance of coffee preferences: Jensen taking his black and Lex pouring half a cup of milk before topping it off with the coffee.  She handed him his cup, their fingers brushing and Lex pulled away a little too quickly, leaving her feeling awkward.  From the hallway, Mackey called out a farewell with a warning about behaving and then slammed the front door.  They were truly alone now.

Jensen turned away and took a sip of his hot coffee looking around the kitchen curiously.  His eyes landed on one of the framed pictures on the wall.  He narrowed his eyes and moved closer to it.  “Is this the park?” he asked.

Lex moved up next to him, “Yeah.  Last winter.  It was the first snowfall.”  She was looking at the familiar picture from a newcomer’s perspective.  It was one of her favourites with the snow covering the landscape.  Somehow, she had managed to capture the stillness and quiet of that day and could still feel it every time she looked at the picture, as if she were there again.

“Did you take this?” he asked her and she nodded shyly.  “It’s really amazing.  I can almost hear the snow crunching.”

“Thank you,”

“Do you have any other photographs?” he asked turning towards her.

“A couple in the living room.”

He smiled, then turned around and walked out of the kitchen towards the living room, his bare feet making no sound on her wooden floors.  She followed him, wary of his sudden good mood but determined to let him get settled, he would open up when he was ready.  He went from one framed photograph on the wall to the other observing them like they were museum pieces and she just watched him while she sipped her coffee.  He turned to look around the room again and something in the corner behind the couch caught his eye.  He put his coffee down on the little table and reached down, wrapping his fingers around the neck of Mackey’s once bought and never played guitar.  He turned to face her. “Do you play?”

She shook her head, “No, it’s Mackey’s… I think she got it as a decoration.”

“Ah, no…  That’s a damn shame.”

He plucked at the strings and twisted the tuning, turning around again to sit down on the couch, one bare foot up on the foot rest.  Lex couldn’t help her curiosity as she moved closer and sat at the other end of the three-seater sofa.  The guitar tuned, Jensen started fiddling around with it, magically drawing music from the former dust collector and somehow tapping on it to make his own percussions.  She smiled as she settled into the couch cushions watching and listening to him play.  He hummed along at first, his voice smooth and deep, throwing in a word here and there and then he transitioned into quietly singing.  Lex was surprised at first, because on the show, they made Dean out as an off key and slightly strident singer, but this beautiful, honeyed voice she could listen to all day.  She closed her eyes for a moment, soaking in the peaceful atmosphere in the room, until suddenly the memory of his lips on another woman, her arms wrapped around him flashed before her and she remembered the pain of the past three months.

She wouldn’t let herself fall for his charm again.  He had conned her once and as nice as it was to see him, sitting on her couch, wearing her ex’s clothes and fiddling with a guitar that never gets played, it was time that he explain himself.  “Why are you here, Jensen?”

He kept playing absently with the guitar and she wondered if he had heard her.  She leaned forward and put her hand on his arm, ready to repeat her question when he started speaking, his voice quiet and distant.

“I couldn’t breathe,” he said, his fingers still moving on the strings, nothing shifting in his body language or face.  “I thought my heart was gonna explode and then I couldn’t breathe.  I just had to get out of there.  I tried to hang on.  I was trying so damn hard.  But it just kept getting worse.  I ended up outside… it helped a little… every step away from there...  So, I hopped in the car and started driving.  And then I was here,” he finished with a frown, his fingers continuing to mechanically pluck the guitar.

“You had a panic attack?” she asked him, frowning.

“I guess so,” he answered with the barest of shrugs.

“Do you get those a lot?” she asked him, scooting to the edge of the couch and turning towards him so she could see his face better.

“I’ve never had one like this before,” he said stopping his playing and looking down at his hand, “I can still feel it.  Like ants under my skin, just trying to get out again.”  He closed his fingers into a fist.

Something was bothering Lex though.  Why would he, in the midst of a full panic attack, come see her, of all people.  She was sure that he had friends, family he could turn to, so why her?  “Tania wasn’t in town?” she found herself asking bitterly.

Jensen turned to look at her and his eyes rove over her face making her feel self-conscious.  He turned away again and grabbed the guitar by the neck and put it back on its stand next to the couch.  “I’m not with Tania, anymore.”

It was her turn to look away, her heart in her throat again.  “I’m sorry,” she told him automatically.  “That’s rough.”

“Naw.  It never should’ve gone on for as long as it did.  She didn’t love me.  It was just an image thing for her, I was her prize, her ticket into the parties and meet and greets with the studio big wigs.”

“Still.  Couldn’t be easy.  She was very beautiful.”

Jensen turned to look at her again, “She didn’t care about me.  She didn’t even know me.  Not really.  In the end, all she cared about was what I could give her.  And… I’m tired of… always pretending like that’s okay.  Like that’s just the way the game is played.”  He looked back down at the ground and his hands were tightly clasped as he kneaded his fingers and palms together.  “I’m always pretending.  I pretend to be confident, and I pretend to be happy and cheerful.  I’ve gotten so used to pretending to be Jensen Ackles, I don’t even know what it means anymore.”

“So, why don’t you just stop?  Pretending?”  She could feel him starting to get wound up, his fingers laced together tightly and the anger that had been smouldering like an ember in her stomach vanished, replaced by the need to comfort him, to protect him.  “Hey,” she said, with a slow shush.  “It’s okay.”  She put her hand on his, squeezing around his palm, trying to get between his hands and she brought her other hand up to his face.  He turned to look at her and she could see the panic in his eyes and it pulled at her heart again.  He suddenly moved forward and buried his face in her shoulder, bringing his arms up and wrapping them around her tightly.  Once she got over her surprise, she wrapped her arms around him and petted his hair, shushing soothingly.  “It’s okay.  I got you.”

She lost track of how long she held him, but after a while, he slowly pulled away again and sat up.  She glanced at the time on the DVD player and realized it was getting to be early evening, the light outside the window dimming into a cloudy dusk.  “Your clothes are probably dry by now.  I’ll go get them.  That way you can get going,” she said, feeling the sadness already creeping in at the edges at the thought of him leaving again.  She stood up from the couch, rocking to her feet, when she felt his hand curl loosely around her wrist.  She stopped and turned to look at him.  He was looking up at her with eyes wide with emotion, the lids lined with those impossibly long lashes.

“I know I have no right to ask, but…  Can I stay?  Just for a little bit?”

Lex’s heart gave a hard thump and she forced it to settle down, not wanting to let her expectations get too high, knowing the fall would be much harder than before.  “What do you want for dinner?”

⚡️

“So, it’s crowds that make you nervous?” she asked him as they picked up the left over take out from Luke’s restaurant.  The food had been delicious as always and they had talked about light things, like photography and some other hobbies, some shared, and others not.  Somehow the topic had returned to his anxiety, though, and he seemed to be calm enough now to talk about it more than before.

“I don’t think it’s the crowds that do it.  Although sometimes the fans can get pretty intense.  It’s more the need to be perfect all the time.  I’m constantly thinking: what should I say and what should I do.  It’s a bit of a pickle because on one hand it makes me… nervous, but the adoration means success.  What if they stop?  What if I say something and all that stops?”

Lex thought back to when they had had dinner at the restaurant, and his reaction to having told the rude girls off and how before she had gotten up, he had been ready to let them say whatever they wanted even though it had been disrespectful and had made him uncomfortable.  “But, Jensen, that’s insane.  You can’t please everybody.  Someone’s bound to get upset about something.  I mean sometimes they’re the ones who are wrong.  You don’t need to over think what to say or do.  Just use common sense and be yourself.  Keep your acting for the camera.”  She put away the last of the dishes in the dishwasher and noticed that he was being very quiet.  She turned to look at him, he was standing beside the kitchen table and looking at her unconvinced.

“And what if…  What if they don’t like who I am… really?  What if they only like me because of the roles I play?”

He was looking so vulnerable, she just wanted to hold him again and give him comfort, but her doubt flashed an alarm in her head and she remembered to be weary of his charm. “What role do you play with me?” she asked him quietly.  “What version of Jensen have you been showing me?”

She watched him closely as his eyes dropped away from her stare and he looked out the patio doors at the steadily falling rain.  It pulled at her heart to see his distress, but she didn’t want to be played anymore.  She just couldn’t forget that he made a living making everyone believe he was one part badass hunter and one part broken man.  Lex walked over to where he was standing and she stood right in front of him.  He looked down at her quickly, his eyes lingering on hers for a split second before looking down at his feet.  She could practically feel the tension coming off him in waves.

“I don’t know what it is about you, Lex,” he said, sticking his clenched fists in the hoodie pockets.  Then he looked at her again, that insecurity, so strange to see in his eyes and on his face, and yet so genuine.  “When I’m with you, I…”

His voice trailed off, and she tried to suppress the tingling that had started at the base of her spine as she realized what he was saying: This was him, had always been him.  Who cares why he did it; he had chosen to be himself with her, it was everyone else he was conning.  She took his face gently in her hands, forcing him to look at her again.  “Did you ever stop to think, what if those people out there, your fans… What if they do like you…  just the way you are?  Just like this.”  His eyes were looking anxious again and she smiled at him fondly, “I think you’ll find, that Jensen Ackles…  is a pretty likeable guy.”

His lips twitched into a tentative smile and Lex felt a familiar flutter in her stomach.  She quickly dropped her hands away and took a step back, picking up a forgotten take out container from the table and bringing it to the fridge in the kitchen.   “So,” she said, trying to cover up the sudden awkwardness.  “What do you feel like doing?  There might be something on TV.”

She heard his soft chuckle and she looked up, closing the refrigerator door.  Jensen was smiling still but he had his eyebrows halfway up his forehead skeptically.  “No TV, thanks.  You feel like a movie?”

Lex agreed and he followed her back into the living room where Lex browsed the DVD shelves for something to watch while he sat down on the end of the couch claiming that anything was fine.  She teased him, throwing out some horrible rom-com title but then decided on a classic: Raiders of the Lost Ark.  She turned towards the room and popped the DVD into the player, grabbing the remote from the stand before turning around to sit on the couch.  She stopped dead in her tracks staring at the available spots and suddenly her mouth was dry.  Jensen was sitting on the end, his left arm stretched along the back of the couch and his right leg bent, his foot curled under his left knee, looking thoroughly relaxed in the jogging pants and hoodie.  She could either sit on the opposite end of the couch, leaving all that awkward space between them, or she could sit in the middle spot, but then he might think she’s crowding him.  She fought with herself, staring at the couch not realizing how weird it must look to him.

“You going to sit down, Lex?” he asked her, snapping her out of her momentary inner struggle.

She walked around the coffee table and sat down on the very edge of the middle spot, her own compromise, curling both her legs under her to the side.  She concentrated on the movie, focusing on Indie as she followed his antics on screen, shuddering at the tarantulas all over his back.  “At least it’s not bees,” said Jensen.  He told her about their own antics with filming the Bugs episode in season 1, and they both turned their attention back to the screen with another shudder, Lex’s appreciation for the things actors were put through to entertain the masses growing.

Lex was slowly becoming more comfortable sitting with Jensen in the glow from the television and the light from the hallway and by the time Indie had escaped the temple, it was like she was watching a movie with any of her friends.  It was as the movie’s pace slowed that she noticed the tingling in her skin, like the hairs were all standing on end.  She shifted her position slightly, trying to ignore it, but it grew in intensity and she found herself glancing at the man beside her on the couch.  Her eyes landed on his chiseled profile and she turned away quickly when she saw his eyes shift towards her.

She heard the rustle of his arm on the couch behind her head just before she felt his hand on her shoulder.  She turned to look at it quickly then back towards his face, but he was still watching the movie, his eyes not leaving the screen.  She felt him nudge her towards him a little and, heart racing, she moved over to sit leaning back against his chest and arm, her feet propped up on the edge of the couch, her legs bent to her chest.  He rested his hand on her upper arm, holding her gently.

It was so comforting, and familiar, a physical connection that she had missed in her long years being single and the tingling on her skin had turned into flutters in her stomach as the heat from his body seeped into her and she turned to snuggle in his warmth: her bent legs resting against his and her face leaning against the relaxed muscles of his chest just below his collarbone.  She had lost track of what the characters were up to in the movie, she realized, and she tried to turn her attention back to them.

“Strawberries and vanilla,” Jensen suddenly said, his voice rumbling slightly in his chest under her ear.

She looked up at him from her head’s resting place, staring at his bare throat, “What?” she asked him, confused.

He turned his head towards her, leaning his cheek against her hair, and she felt his chest rise and fall as he took a deep breath.  “You always smell like strawberries and vanilla.”

Lex swallowed hard, trying to ignore the sudden increase in her heart rate, “That’s just my shampoo,” she said, the nervous chatter making a belated appearance, “Ty keeps buying it.  It’s some sort of bio, all-natural thing.”

“It’s intoxicating,” he whispered against her hair.

Lex raised her head off his shoulder to look at him.  He was just bare inches away from her and like she was dreaming, she grazed her mouth against his gently, closing her eyes.  A sigh escaped her parted lips and she kissed him softly, a sense of fulfillment overtaking her: it felt so right, in a way that she hadn’t felt in months.  She opened her eyes and he was looking right at her.  His arm was still wrapped around her, keeping her close and she couldn’t take her eyes off him, memorizing him: the shape of his lips, the curve of his nose, the planes of his face, the way his hair had dried, strands of it falling on his forehead.

She raised her hands and laid them gently against the sides of his face, sweeping her thumbs along his eyebrows.  He closed his eyes, his long lashes resting delicately above his cheeks, and she raised herself a little to kiss the bridge of his nose, now sweeping her thumbs along his cheek bones.  She noticed the line of freckles over his nose and along his cheeks and she kissed those too.  She swept her hands lower, caressing his strong jaw, her palms tingling from the scratch of his evening stubble.  He opened his eyes again as she ran her thumb along the bottom edge of his parted lips.  She couldn’t look away, held captive by the intensity in his green irises, slightly washed out by the dim lighting, and when he leaned forward, she tilted her head back and their lips connected again in a long, electrifying kiss that left her humming inside.

Passion bloomed in the pit of her stomach, setting fire to her head and body and she wrapped her arms around his broad shoulders.  His arms wrapped around her too, and when he pulled her closer, she climbed onto his lap, her knees on either side of him as they kissed over and over.  She ran her hands down his neck and along his shoulders, continuing her exploration of him, and squeezing his muscles through the cotton of the sweater while he held her in his arms.  Her hand found the neck edge of the hoodie and she slipped inside, his bare skin hot against her palm and she wanted more, she needed to feel him.

She pulled back slightly, trying to control herself, leaning her forehead against his and breathing heavily, her senses overwhelmed with him: his earthy scent under her familiar soap, the taste of his lips, the feel of him holding her close.  She tried to catch her breath and slow her speeding heart, but when he laid a hand against the side of her head and tilted back his chin to capture her lips again, she gave in to the growing intensity and returned his kiss, her hands finding the zipper tab keeping the sweater closed.  She pulled down on it, and ran her hands on his bare chest, caressing more of his warm skin, feeling the passion escalating quickly out of control again.

She pulled away again with difficulty, Jensen kissing a line down her neck.  “I don’t do one-night stands,” she said breathlessly, caught between her passion and her need for self-preservation – she needed to know this was more than just physical.  He kissed back up to her chin and pressed his mouth against hers again and using all her conviction she pulled back on his hair and looked him in the eyes.  “Got it?”

“Yes,” he said, his voice catching in his throat and she slammed her mouth down on his again, the last of her resistance giving way as she let her intense desire take over the controls: there was nothing she wanted more than to be with this man she loved beyond reason.

⚡️


	7. Chapter 7

The sun came streaming in through the bay window of the master bedroom.  Lex slowly opened her eyes, and watched for a moment as the breeze played with the branches of the tree out front, its browning leaves clinging to the wood getting ready to hibernate.

She took a deep breath, content to stay where she was, feeling the warmth of his body beside her: the curve of her neck resting on his arm, his hand laying on the bed sheets bedside her, relaxed in sleep, as opposed to the night before when it had been holding her so tightly.  She smiled, looking at his forearm, running her hand slowly down from his elbow to his wrist and pausing to play with his thin leather bracelet a moment before lacing her fingers with his.  Jensen woke up with a groan that sounded like music to her ears and she smiled again as he shifted his body under the sheets without pulling his arm out of her grasp.  She felt his fingers brush her long hair away gently before he lay a kiss at the top of her spine.

She turned over onto her other side, not letting go of his hand, drawing his arm around her to rest on her waist as she sighed again, looking at his relaxed face resting on the pillow: eyes still half lidded with sleep, short hair messy from sleep, jaw and chin darkened by beard shadow.  She pressed her mouth against his for a languid morning kiss, their lips just barely moving as though still worn out from the previous night.

Lex pulled away a little.  “I could kiss you all day,” she said with another contented sigh before moving in for another kiss.  Something in his now open eyes made her pause though, and she pulled back again to look at him more closely.  Whatever had piqued her concern though had disappeared. She frowned, undeterred.  “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong, sweetheart,” he said nonchalantly, turning a cocky grin on her and pulling her in for a kiss.

Lex turned her head away and pushed back on his chest.  “Now I know something’s wrong.  So, put Dean away and just tell me.”

He pulled his hand back and lay against the pillows staring at the ceiling.  “I said some things yesterday that didn’t exactly put me in my best light.  I just want to be perfect… for you.”

“And you think acting like Dean Winchester is perfect?” Lex said, unable to hold back the wide grin.  She lay her hand on his chest instinctively, her mind and body basking in the quiet perfection of the moment.

He frowned, looking perplexed and worried, “Well, he is good with the ladies.” He attempted another cocky grin but it faltered when Lex raised her eyebrows at him skeptically.  He looked away again, “I guess, I’m just waiting for you to realize that I’m nothing special after all.”

Lex marvelled that he felt he needed to impress her.  She raised herself up and took his face in her hands forcing him to look at her. “Jensen, listen to me.  I like you more with each passing moment and with every new thing I learn about you… not less.  I like the real you, insecurities and all, not some BS machismo persona you slap on like a mask.  Got it?  You don’t ever need to pretend with me.”

He reached up and pulled her down for a kiss, holding her tightly.  He rolled them to the side, pressing her back against the pillows, then nestled down against her chest, pulling his arm back to settle more comfortably on his shoulder.  She smiled, sitting back against the headboard, the weight of him so perfect, “Comfy?” she asked him, amused, and he nodded his head, rubbing his face against the swell of her bare breast, making her laugh.  She brought her arms up to rest on his shoulders, and ran her hand through his short hair.  She kissed the top of his head affectionately, worry slowly encroaching on the moment.  How long would she get to hold him like this?  He had walked away from his life’s obligations but he would have to go back eventually, what would that mean for her?

“Your heart is beating like mad, Lex.  Is everything okay?”

“How long can you stay?” she asked him softly, petting his hair again.

He didn’t say anything at first, and Lex tried to steady her heart with deep breaths while she waited for his answer.  Finally, he spoke, his voice a rough whisper against her skin, “Can I stay forever?” he asked.

He lifted his head to look at her and she could see the genuine yearning in his eyes and face and she smiled, relieved, as she stroked his cheek and stubbly jaw.  “Yes.  Always.”

He stretched out his neck and kissed her smiling lips.  Their kissing grew hungrier as happy contentment turned to excitement and he pressed his body down on hers.  She wrapped her arms around his neck and shoulders holding him close feeling the familiar yearning throb in her abdomen that would only be appeased by making love to him again.

The doorbell rang out suddenly, cutting into the haze of mounting passion as Lex leaned her head back with a groan.  “And there’s the rest of the world.”

“Let Mackey get it,” Jensen said huskily as he lay a trail of kisses down her outstretched neck.

Lex was sorely tempted to stay in the warm bed as his lips and hands moved down her body in near worship, but as the bell repeated its loud request she knew that the only way to make it stop would be for her to tear herself away from him.  She groaned again.  “Hold that thought, I’m just going to tell whoever that is to go screw themselves.”

She forced herself to roll away from the gorgeous man under her sheets and reached to the floor to get her leggings from the night before.  She reached down again and grabbed the hoodie she had lent him and zipped it up halfway, the cotton baggy on her, making her look like a lump.  He was watching her with a small smile on his face though, like he couldn’t care less if she was dressed in a paper bag and in a swell of affection, she crawled back onto the bed to kiss him.  The doorbell interrupted them again and Lex let out a frustrated, “Damn it!” as she stayed where she was, on all fours on the bed, leaning her forehead against his.

“Go,” Jensen said, sweeping her hair back and caressing her cheek, looking at her fondly.

Lex groaned and tore herself away again and made her way down the stairs, running her fingers through her hair to try and tame the dishevelled waves a little and zipped the hoodie to the top.  “Yeah, yeah! Calm down,” she mumbled at the closed door as the bell rang again before opening it to find out who would be suffering her wrath.

Standing on her front steps was a young woman that looked vaguely familiar, someone she had seen before hanging out with Mackey.  “Hi!” she said, leaning over and looking behind Lex.

“Um, hey,” Lex looked at her expectantly, but she just kept looking past her into the house.  “Can I help you?” she prompted.

“Oh! yeah, Mackey said I could drop in this morning.”

Lex rubbed the back of her neck in confusion.  “Are you sure she said today?”  The woman just nodded her head enthusiastically and again tried to peer around Lex’s body.  “Look, today’s really not a good day.  Couldn’t you come back some other time?  I don’t even know if Mackey’s awake.”

The woman ignored her and started moving towards the open door, looking like she was ready to push past Lex in her undeterred quest to get inside.  Resigned, thinking some truly unkind things about Mackey’s weird friends, Lex let her in, closing the door again, and asked her to wait while she got Mackey.  She climbed the stairs two at a time and knocked on Mackey’s closed bedroom door with the side of her fist calling out her name.

“Is everything ok?” came Jensen’s voice from her bedroom.  She turned to look at him standing there in just the black jogging pants and all she wanted to do was push him back inside, lock the door behind them and say to hell with Mackey’s foolishness, but just then the doorbell rang out again.  Lex turned to peer down the stairs just in time to see the woman she had let into the house reach for the handle.

“Um no!  Thanks!  If you don’t mind, I’ll get it in a minute!” Lex called down, leaning down the steps, but again she was ignored and the unwelcome guest opened the door wide, letting in a couple more people who were also looking vaguely familiar, though she was certain they had never been inside her house.

She turned around again urgently, starting to feel like this was turning into a strange nightmare.  All she wanted was to get back to Jensen, so she turned the handle and walked into Mackey’s room, fed up with these ridiculous games.  “Mackey!” Lex called out, glancing around at the mess all over the darkened room.  She finally spotted the blond lying diagonally on the bed, all the blankets shoved to the side, her bare ass hanging over the edge.  The naked lump stirred and Lex called out to her again, “You need to get your ass downstairs.” The doorbell rang again making her jump stiffly. “Like _now_ , Mack.”

“Wha?” she said, waking up suddenly and twisting around to stare at Lex in confusion. “What’re you doin’ in m’room?”

“Mack,” Lex said again, turning away from her roommate’s exposed skin, “Get some clothes on and go deal with this!  I don’t know what you did, but you’re gonna clean it up.”

Lex turned around and closed the door behind her as again the doorbell rang out.  Jensen pushed off from the door frame and took a step towards the railing, “What’s going on?” he asked.

“I don’t know.  Maybe you should stay up here for now,” Lex said as she headed down the stairs again to stop the girl from letting in yet another person.  The sight that met her as she got halfway down the stairs nearly made her slip as she grabbed hold of the wooden banister.  There were maybe six or seven women, including the first one she had let in, ranging between 20 and 35, she guessed, crawling all over her living room, looking at her and Mackey’s personal effects, picking up Jensen’s abandoned coffee cup from the day before and just… touching everything.  “What the hell is going on?” she cried out as she walked down the remaining steps and glanced back at the kitchen to see if any more people were hiding there.  She just saw, sitting on the edge of the kitchen counter, Jensen’s things that she had taken from his jeans’ pockets the day before and she made a beeline for them, before these home invaders got their hands on his things.  As she reached the kitchen though, and tucked his wallet, keys and phone into the pockets of her hoodie, she caught some of the whispers behind her.

“Is that _her?_ ”

“I dunno…  she’s kinda…  ordinary.”

“I’m prettier than that.”

“What could he possibly see in her?”

Lex turned around apprehensively and found the girls were staring at her, crowding in the hallway and leaning out around the living room wall to see her.  One of them brought a camera up to her eyes and snapped a picture, the flash startling Lex.  Her heart started beating a little faster.  _They couldn’t possibly be here because of Jensen…  How would they even know?_ she wondered, trying to understand as the door rang again and the closest girl, a tall brunette, turned around and pulled it open, letting in another trio of strangers.  The hallway was getting crowded, and a few more flashes went off, Lex unsure what these people were taking pictures of.  Then she thought of Jensen and some of the things he had told her the previous day and suddenly, getting all these people out of her house became urgent.

“Alright!  Party’s over.  Time for you guys to get out!” she called out, trying to sound confident while wondering what Mackey was up to and when she’d be getting her ass down to help her deal with this.

She started walking towards the assembled strangers, trying to shepherd them back out the front door, which was now just hanging open, as another round of flashes startled her.  It was like herding unruly ducklings, one person rolling away from her outstretched arms to avoid being shoved out towards the door.  Lex was getting angry, who did these people think they were?  She redoubled her efforts, raising her voice again telling them to get out, which is when all hell broke loose.

It started with a single whispered _Oh my God!_ and quickly turned into a wave of shrieks and unintelligible babble mixed in with them calling out Jensen’s name.  She didn’t need to try and push them towards the door anymore as they crowded in close to the stairs.  Lex glanced up through the railings to see Jensen standing halfway up the steps still dressed in just the jogging pants.  He had frozen in place with the first shriek and was now looking around at the people with a startled, panicked look, caught completely off guard by the sudden appearance of the collection of fans in Lex’s hallway.  One of the girls started up the steps and Lex tried to push past the sudden crush to stop her, but she couldn’t make it past the people clamouring for Jensen’s attention.

She looked back up towards where the girl was bouncing on the step excitedly, and she saw the plastic grin spreading on Jensen’s face as he reached for something the girl was holding out towards him.  As he handed it back, the girl reached up and lay a hand on his bare chest and Lex saw the startled look flashing across his features before laughing quietly and stepping back from the invasive touch.  Lex finally managed to squeeze her way to the bottom of the stairs, enraged by the presumption of this woman, and worried that the rest of the unwelcome visitors would try to rush the stairs as well.  She wanted to grab the self-entitled girl who had already made him so uncomfortable, but almost like a trigger, her putting her foot on the bottom step made the sea of fans suddenly surge forward and it took all she had to stop them from going around her.

Mackey finally appeared and pushed past Jensen on the stairs.  She grabbed the fan by the shoulders turning her around and forced her down towards the door with a near constant stream of heavily accented words that Lex could not make out.  Mack took over trying to herd the sheep out of the house and Lex turned around quickly, climbing the steps after Jensen who had retreated to the second floor and was heading for her bedroom, all trace of good humour gone.

Lex rushed into the room behind him.  He had stopped and was facing the bed, putting his watch back on to his left wrist.  Lex brought her hand up to touch him calling his name softly, “Jensen?”

He turned around abruptly and anger was contorting his handsome face as he growled at her, “Did you enjoy that?  Your little taste of fame?”

“What?” Lex asked confused, pulling back her hand, “What are you talking about?”

He moved up to her and Lex almost shrank back from the look in his eyes, “I trusted you, Lex!” he said, his voice growing louder with his agitation, “And you turn around and do this?”

“You think I’m responsible for the screaming hoard down there?” Lex cried out in disbelief, “Are you serious?  Jensen, I was with you the whole time!”

He pushed past her and headed for the stairs again, Lex hot on his trail.  Thankfully, Mackey had managed to get rid of the fans and she was leaning back against the closed door.  She straightened up when she saw them come down the stairs, but Lex waved her off.

“You’re just like all of them,” accused Jensen as they moved into the kitchen, “All you care about is status.”

Lex stopped chasing him, stunned for a moment by his words.  He pulled open the basement door and disappeared down the stairs as she reeled and felt sick to her stomach.  This can’t be happening, she thought desperately.  How could he even think she would betray him like this?  She tried to make sense of it all in her head, but there was no sense to it.  She headed down the stairs and turned the corner, spotting him standing by the dryer slipping back into his clothes from the day before.  She walked up to him as he pulled his t-shirt over his head and down to cover his torso.

“Jensen, please,” she started, reaching to lay her hand on his upper arm.

He shrugged away from her. “I must’ve been insane to think I could trust you.”

Lex took a deep breath and tried again, “Would you please calm down?  They’re gone!  This is just your anxiety talking.”

He stopped moving, halfway through putting on his second sock, and he looked up at Lex, furious. “You have _no idea_ how I feel!” he boomed, then finished putting on his sock before moving past her again and heading for the stairs.  “You don’t care about me at all.  This is great for you, isn’t it?  Instant glory!”

“What are you talking about?  This is nuts!” she pleaded, desperate to understand, desperate to make him stop and think as he made his way back upstairs.

“Plenty of those girls got pictures of you,” he said over his shoulder as she followed him, “You’ll get notoriety just because you’re the ordinary little girl who slept with Jensen Ackles, TV heartthrob!  Play your cards right and this could be real good for that little record store you work in – an interview here, a curious fan there… Good for you!”  They had reached the kitchen and he continued around the corner towards the hallway.

“Hey! Hold it!” she said, hurt and a little outraged as they headed towards the front door, Mackey moving out of their way, “That’s not fair!  I didn’t do anything!  I’m as much a victim here a you.  Only difference is that I’m not losing my friggin’ mind!  Stop for a second, will you?”  Lex grabbed his wrist as he reached down to put on his shoes, and pulled him back, forcing him to look at her.  She continued more softly, “Listen to me… can’t we just…  laugh about this?  This is crazy,” she finished with a nervous laugh.

Jensen’s eyes bore into hers, his face set in a smouldering anger that made her drop his wrist, her heart beating in her throat.  “You’ve had one encounter, Lex.  I’ve been dealing with ‘this’ since I was eighteen.  Don’t, for a second, think you know how I feel.  You had me going with your little act last night, but I’m not going to be fooled again.  I never should have come here.  You’re just like all the rest,” he finished in an angry whisper.

Lex was stunned as she held his angry stare, the hurt in his voice all the more unbearable because she realized she couldn’t do anything about it: he had already made up his mind about her.  “I was nothing but honest with you, Jensen.  And I will always be glad that you came to me and trusted me.  But if that’s really how you feel, then you’re right… you should probably go.”

Lex reached into the hoodie pockets and pulled out his things that she had been keeping safe from the invasion and handed them to him.  They stared at each other a little longer, then Jensen dropped his eyes, tucking his wallet, cell and keys into his jean pockets.  He grabbed his shirt from the coat rack on the wall and put his hand on the handle.  He hesitated, frozen where he was for a moment, like a movie on pause and Lex dared to hope that he was finally seeing reason.  She took a step towards him, but then he pulled on the handle and walked out onto the steps where he was greeted by the gathered crowd with applause and cheers.  He closed the door behind him, not even glancing at Lex who was standing in the entrance feeling a crushing weight smother her heart as she rushed into the living room in time to watch him climb into a black car parked out front and drive off.  She sat down in the window seat, feeling like all the breath had been sucked out of her as she watched the crowd start to dissipate – the occasional fan glancing her way.  Mackey came up to stand beside her.

“What did you do?” Lex asked her, her voice hardly making a sound in the empty vacuum left behind by his departure.

“I may have told a few people down at the pub… last night… that a certain handsome…  um…” Mackey’s voice trailed off and her tone changed as she became apologetic, “I’m sorry Lex…  I didn’t think—“

“No,” interrupted Lex harshly, “You really didn’t.”

She stood up from her seat in the window and held her arms tightly around her middle as she made her way back up to her room and kicked the door shut behind her.

⚡️


	8. Chapter 8

October

_If you want to stick around for a while, you’re welcome to stay._

Lex stared blankly at the print out in front of her, her brain not even attempting to understand the words and numbers.

“Excuse me,” a voice said from across the counter drawing Lex out of her bubble.  “You’re Alexa Larsen, right?” The woman was vaguely familiar, like a face trying to pierce through the fog of a distant memory.

Lex could not place her as she politely answered, “Yes, I am.  Can I help you with anything?”

“This is a nice, little shop.  It’s very… homey.”  Something in the woman’s slightly waspish tone made Lex frown as she looked at her more closely.  “Have you been the manager here very long?”

A memory, buried under the rubble of her shattered emotions attempted to claw its way back to the surface as she lowered her eyes from the woman’s intense stare.  “No comment,” she mumbled as she tried to ignore the reporter she had met… then.

“Oh, come on Alexa…  I’m trying to help you out, here.”

“No comment,” she repeated.

“All I want is to ask you a couple of questions so I can write a cute little piece on your… store.  It’ll be good for publicity.”

Lex felt sick to her stomach.  She clenched her teeth as she looked up at the vile woman in front of her, “No.  All you want is a piece of juicy gossip for whatever crappy, low-grade blog you’re writing, so you can take your recorder and that jerk with the camera pretending to browse the light jazz section for the last twenty minutes and get the hell out.  I have nothing to say to you.”

The woman pursed her lips and straightened her shoulders looking like she was ready to argue, but Lex couldn’t care less as she lowered her eyes back to the list in front of her and went back to her tasks.  A glimpse of hurt-filled green eyes slipped through the breach in her protective wall, and Lex pushed it back, covering up the gap again with her mental white noise.

_If you want to stick around for a while, you’re welcome to stay._

_I got a lot of work to do.  And it’s not my life._

⚡️

She lived for Thursdays.

Each week, she waited with mounting dread for the time when she would see him again.  For an hour every week, she scoured the face on her television set, desperately searching for signs of him.  Though the man was the same – his eyes, nose… the planes of his face she had caressed with her hands… the lips she had kissed – all she could see was Dean Winchester and it left her yearning so much more painfully for the man she had lost.  Then, the credits would roll and everything would drain out of her, leaving her an empty shell going about her life on cruise control.

⚡️

November

“Come on, Lexie,” she heard Mackey’s voice through the door, “This is killing you.  You gotta snap out of it, luv.”

Lex buried her face in her pillows and felt the sob tear its way up her body – starting from her stomach, up through her oesophagus and out through her eyes.  She held on more tightly feeling like if she let go her whole body would shatter into a million pieces.

“Please, Lexie…”

“Go away, Mackey,” she ripped out of her throat as a fresh wave of pain washed over her.

_Is that what you want me to do, Dean?  Just let you go?_

She couldn’t.  She just couldn’t.

⚡️

December

“Pass the cranberry sauce, Ty?”

Lex glanced around at the round table and the collection of friends gathered there.  It was more crowded than usual: Hayden had scrounged up a date and Ty had brought someone from work, though it was unclear if the cute red-head was there as her date or as a friend.  Lex was having a hard time caring.  Mackey somehow had also gotten an invite to the yearly Christmas festivities and Lex was pointedly ignoring her nerve gratingly loud voice while she sat in an armchair away from the ruckus and stared out the darkened window at the layer of white covering the front yard and the park across the street.

“More eggnog, Lex?” Liz asked her, appearing at her side like a Supernatural demon.

Lex did not answer, and after a moment, the hostess walked away again.

_I can’t just sit around, drinking eggnog, pretending everything’s okay, when I know, next Christmas, you’ll be dead.  I just can’t._

Lex raised her glass to her lips and took a sip, watching the people reflected in the dark window as the lights blinked round and round.

⚡️

January

“Hey, boss!” called out Sean from behind the counter where he was printing out transaction reports and counting bills in the drawer.

_And I gotta stay in this craphole of a world, alone.  So, the way I see it… if I’m gonna make it, if I’m gonna fight the war after you’re gone…_

“Good morning, Sean,” she called out happily moving up beside him behind the counter.

_Then, I’ve got to change._

Sean raised his head and whipped it around to look at her.  She flashed a smile at him and handed him a coffee.  He had changed his hair over the holidays, the blue streaks now a festive red and she reached up and flicked a strand out of his eyes.  His lips stretched into a crooked smile.

“Nice to see you smiling again, Alexa.”

“It’s good to be smiling again, Sean.”

_Into what?_

She stretched her lips even more and turned around again to go up into the office with her coffee.

_Into you.  I gotta be more like you._

She closed the door behind her and leaned her head against the wood panel, taking a deep breath, feeling the tear slip down her cheek and catch on the forced upturned corner of her lips.

⚡️

February

“On Valentine’s Day Lex!” cried out Ty, clearly distressed as she nursed a coffee sitting at one of two occupied tables in Luke’s restaurant.

“That’s rough,” she answered, a little numb.

“I was so close!  And instead I had to spend Valentine’s Day alone… AGAIN!  You know how that feels?”

Lex sipped at her own coffee, staring at the table.  She had spent Valentine’s Day watching Dean die over and over as his brother was stuck in a Groundhog’s Day-like loop.  Luke walked over to their table and pulled up a chair to sit down, looking dejected.  She sensed, more than heard, as he and her sister exchanged a few words.

“Lex!  Are you even listening to me?”  Lex startled, looking up.  Luke had somehow disappeared and Ty was glaring at her, her lips in a thin line.  She threw her hands in the air, looking exasperated. “You’re a selfish bitch, Lex, you know that?”

Ty’s words somehow pierced the fog of her stupor.  “What did you say to me?”

“You’re selfish.  My life is falling apart, Luke’s restaurant is closing, your friends miss you and you can’t even look up from your own misery long enough to care.  What happened to you Lex?  This isn’t you.  Get over it already ‘cause I need my sister back.  I need YOU!”

Lex swallowed hard, her eyes darting back and forth feeling her heart accelerate as the feelings she’d been suppressing started to surface.  She fought against them, her defense mechanisms taking over.

_I know how dead you are inside.  How worthless you feel._

Her sister needed her, she argued with herself.  She couldn’t keep doing this.

_I know how you look into a mirror, and hate what you see._

Lex lowered her eyes again.  She couldn’t do it.  Her heart rate slowed finally as her thoughts drifted again to the world behind her television screen.

_No one can save you, because you don’t want to be saved._

⚡️

March

⚡️

April

⚡️

May

Lex placed yet another record in the rack, glancing curiously at the art in the back before picking up the box and moving over to the next section.  Sean had called in sick that morning, so Lex was manning the store single-handedly.  After two months of dark Thursdays, Ty feeding her little snippets about the writers’ guild strike, there were finally new episodes.  But something had changed.  Lex hadn’t noticed it until she watched Jensen once again through the grainy lens of what felt like amateur video, the episode made to look like a documentary about ghost hunting, but something was definitely different.  The desperation that had tinged her dependence on seeing his face in the horror television show wasn’t as strong anymore, her heart not jumping out of her chest every time he spoke.  She was starting to feel like maybe she could be normal again.

The bell rang, announcing a customer’s arrival and Lex looked up, her heart giving a half-hearted thump and she scolded herself.

_There’s nothing wrong with having a little hope, Dean._

_Hope doesn’t get you jack squat._

She shook her head at the remembered dialogue from the previous night’s episode.  Hope was the knife in the wound, keeping it from closing and she was done with it.  She looked up as Ty and Mackey walked into her peripherals.

“Hey guys.  What’re you up to?” Lex asked them as she continued to put away the records.  Neither of them said anything, and Lex turned to glance at them.  Ty had a huge smile on her face and her hands behind her back.  She was wearing her beanie, a sure sign of spring since she refused to wear it during the winter months when “everyone wears them,” and she was practically vibrating with excitement.  Lex frowned and looked at Mackey, registering her eccentric outfit, impossible to ignore – she was wearing black velvet jeans, rainbow suspenders, a bright blue cotton shirt and black tux tails – and she was also smiling sheepishly.  “Is everything okay?” Lex asked them suspiciously.

“I got it Lex!  I finally got it!  Me and Mackey had to pull every string we had to get it, but… eeeeee!”

Lex laughed and smiled confusedly at her sister and her roommate when, suddenly, Ty swung her arms around and held out a piece of torn paper towards her.  She took the paper from her.  “What’s this, Ty?”

“Just look at it!” she said, jumping in one spot looking beyond excited.

“Okay, fine, just calm down before you explode… or pee yourself.”  Lex shook her head as her sister rolled her eyes at her and suddenly grabbed Mackey’s arm and tugged on it excitedly.  She looked down at the paper in her hands, and unfolded it.  The paper said Gayle Morris with two ten-digit phone numbers written underneath.  She gestured questioningly at her sister.  “Who’s Gayle Morris?”

“She’s Jensen’s agent!” Ty practically yelled, “That’s her number in L.A. and the other one is in Vancouver.”

Lex felt like she had been punched to the gut.

_Hope doesn’t get you jack squat._

“Now, you can ring him,” added Mackey with a smile, her messy blond curls falling in her face, her eyes begging for forgiveness.

Lex sighed and looked down at the paper again, “This is really nice guys…” she looked up at the two girls again and she just couldn’t burst their bubble, they looked so excited and happy.  Lex smiled back at them, “Thanks.”

“Oh my God!  I’m so excited for you, Lex!  He’s gonna be so happy to hear from you!  Okay, we’re gonna let you call him.  Tell me all about it tonight at Luke’s closing party okay?”

“You got it, Ty.”

Ty jumped at her, grabbing her arm, and kissed her cheek in a spontaneous gesture of affection the younger sibling hadn’t done since they were teenagers.  Lex smiled again and watched them as they left, Mackey’s arm resting on Ty’s shoulders.  Lex frowned, surprised.  She wondered how she hadn’t noticed that her sister had a thing for her roommate, how long had that been going on?  The smile melted off her face as she glanced down at the paper again.

_The only person who can get me out of this thing is me._

She moved up to the counter and walked around the open end of it to stand by the phone.  She had been pining her lost romance long enough, she decided, it was time to come back to life.  She took another deep breath and crumpled the paper before throwing it into the garbage can under the cash register.

⚡️

Lex pushed open the door to Luke’s restaurant.  She was the last one there, but after closing the shop for the evening, she had decided that she wanted to shower and change before joining the rest of the group, and so she was greeted by a chorus of hoots and whistles as she walked through the door – her feet in her royal blue high heel shoes, her legs clad in dark blue skinny jeans and her torso wrapped in a loose, three-quarter-sleeved cotton shirt that matched the shoes with a black vest on top.  She had put on some make up and piled her hair on top of her head in a messy bun and she smiled, feeling like a million bucks.

She walked up to the table and pulled the last chair out while everyone went back to their conversations. She looked around fondly at the people she was closest to in the whole world: Hayden was nursing a drink in her hand, looking glum, Liz was talking animatedly with Luke who was pouring wine into everyone’s glasses, Ty and Mackey were sitting next to each other, Mackey looking around absently while Ty spoke to Dave.  Mackey suddenly reached up and brushed a stray strand of hair from Ty’s face and Lex smiled as she saw her little sister startle and then blush deeply glancing at Mackey shyly.

Liz suddenly stood up and reached for her glass of wine.  “Excuse me!  Since everyone is here now… thanks for making us wait, Lex.  You look fabulous by the way, I hate you forever,” Lex laughed, and she actually felt the warmth spread inside of her.  Liz continued, “So a year ago today, this man…  whose name we still can’t say…” Everyone chuckled. “Opened this wonderful restaurant… and, sadly, we were the only ones who showed up.” Lex smiled again, remembering her first encounter with the hopeful restaurateur as he yelled at the delivery van early in the morning.  Liz continued, “We’ve shared some good meals around this table, but, due to circumstances beyond our control, it looks like starting next week, we’re going to have to figure out somewhere new to eat.  Luke, I just want to tell you, no one knows why some things work out, and others don’t.  Why some people make it in Nowhere, and others…”

“Get fired,” interrupted Hayden, who took a swig of her drink, staring at the table cloth.  Everyone turned to look at her.  “Yeah, I know…  Another failure for me.  Whoop-dee-doo.”

“It’s not like you were any good at your job…  What did you do again?” asked Dave.

“I was working in investments…  you know that,” she answered sharply, looking insulted.

“Right…  and what did you do with these investments?”

“You know…  stuff…  that you do, banking… buy, sell… buy.”  Hayden trailed off looking dejected and they laughed again.

Luke raised his glass of wine, “To Hayden!  The worst investment banker in the City.”

Hayden narrowed her eyes at him, “Yeah?  Well, to Luke then!  The absolute worst restaurateur, ever.”

“Ah, but he does make some damn good food!” chimed in Ty.

“Does he?  I don’t know, it’s my first time here,” threw in Mackey sending Ty into a fit of giggles.

Lex glanced at the lanky blonde smiling shyly at her sister, wondering for the first time how much of what she considered Mackey’s foolishness was just humour that she never understood. Around her, everyone raised their glasses, cheering, and she joined in, drinking to the group’s failed accomplishments.

“You know,” Ty added shyly, “While we’re on the topic of announcements.  I just thought I’d let you all know, that I finally found someone who’s amazing, and funny, and talented… and we’ve decided to move in together.”

“With your blessing of course, Lexie,” Mackey jumped in, putting her arm around Ty’s shoulders and kissing her temple affectionately.

Judging by the shocked silence around the table, Lex figured this was news to everyone and she was suddenly relieved that maybe she had come out of her deep dark hole before she had missed out on too many things.  She raised her glass to her sister and her soon-to-be-ex-roommate.  “That’s great guys, really!  And besides, maybe now I can finally find a decent roommate,” she teased, “You do know she’s a complete nut-job right, Ty?”

Ty looked over at Mackey with a little smile on her face, “No, she’s brilliant,” she said, and this time it was Mackey who ducked her head shyly, something Lex had never seen the tall blond do in all the time they had lived together.

“Okay then!” exclaimed Dave, shaking his head, “anyone else have anything to add before we dig in?”

“Um, yeah,” Lex said, standing up.

“Oh God… You’re not going to tell us you’re a man, are you?  I don’t think I can take any more surprises tonight,” joked Dave.

Lex leered at him, “Dave, you already know the answer to that, if you’re bringing it up now, does it mean you’re ready to come out of the closet?” Everyone laughed, including Dave who had an ear-to-ear grin plastered to his face.  Lex looked around at her friends and family gathered around the long rectangular table in the empty restaurant.  “I know that I’ve been a bit… out of it, lately.”  A general exaggerated mumbling interrupted her.

“Out of it?” said Liz bluntly, “You mean dead-to-the-world, right? ‘Cause I think I’ve seen 90-year-old Mrs. Muncie from across the park more than you in the past eight months.”

 _I’m sorry.  This is all my fault.  I know that…_ she heard Dean Winchester whisper in her head, and she felt a twinge of guilt seeing her friend’s face, but she took a deep breath and continued louder, “Yeah, well, from now on, I plan on being deliriously happy.  And I swear, I’ll make it up to you guys.  I’m sorry, I really am.  And it’s time for me to move on.”

Everyone raised their glass towards her and took a swallow of wine before Luke disappeared into the back of the restaurant to get the last meal he would prepare in that kitchen.

⚡️

Four courses and many bottles of wine later, the group had spread out in the abandoned looking restaurant, with its white cloths covering the variously piled furniture.  Hayden and Luke were sitting at the piano, Hayden had let her hair down out of its pony tail, the strands falling around her wine reddened face softening her angular features.  She was playing the keys while Luke sang along in a deep baritone, an empty bottle and two wine glasses sitting on top of the closed case.  Ty was sitting in Mackey’s lap, both of them occasionally looking around shyly, but giggling quietly in their drunken giddiness.  As Lex watched, she saw Mackey sweep Ty’s hair away from her face again slowly and Ty leaned in for a kiss.  They looked so happy that Lex couldn’t help but be happy with them, a warm glow of well-being spreading through her core.  She was surprised to find that somewhere along the line, she had managed to forgive Mackey her blunder… maybe it was all part of her moving on.  Liz and Dave were sitting watching the piano performance, Liz’s legs in Dave’s lap as he absentmindedly stroked and kneaded them through her jeans.

Liz glanced back, catching the tail end of Ty and Mackey’s kiss and she raised her eyebrows in surprise.  Her eyes shifted over to Lex, sitting in her corner, nursing her glass of wine and she looked concerned for a moment, but Lex smiled at her and she smiled back.  The plump brunette turned back towards her husband and whispered something in his ear, giving him a kiss on the cheek as he released her legs so she could stand up.  She made her way over to Lex’s window table, stumbling slightly as she navigated the open floor space.  She dropped down into the chair across from Lex and leaned her head down on her arms on the table.

“Oh God!  I think I’m drunk!” she said, suddenly bursting into a fit of giggles that Lex couldn’t resist chuckling along to.

Lex turned her gaze back to her sister who was now standing, pressed to Mackey, their arms around each other as they slowly turned and swayed to the music.  “How did I not know about this?” she asked Liz, bemused.

Liz looked up to see what she was talking about and then put her head back down.  Her voice was muffled as she talked, “Don’t beat yourself up.  You were preoccupied.  And besides, they haven’t been very public about it, until now.”

“Ty used to tell me everything going on in her life,” Lex mused sadly, thinking about her little sister sitting on her bed talking life, love and philosophy in the middle of the night while she worked at her desk trying to finish a paper for school.

Liz raised her head off her arms again and looked over at Ty and Mackey, who were now spinning more quickly, Ty’s laughter echoing in the room.  “She’s all grown up you know.  Maybe she didn’t want to rub it in your face.  We all know how hard this…  um.  How hard the year has been for you.”

“Well, from now on, that’s it.  I’m not going to let life pass me by because of some TV crush.”

Liz turned to look at her, her eyes analyzing Lex’s face with a frown, “He’s a bit more than a crush, Lex…” she said, keeping a close eye on her.  “So it’s really real?  You’re over him?”

Lex felt barely a twitch of discomfort as Jensen flickered into her consciousness.  She smiled sadly, “Yeah.  I really think I am.”

Liz kept looking at her a moment and Lex took a sip of her wine.  “Ok then,” Liz said, “I guess it doesn’t matter now if I tell you he’s in town this weekend?”

Lex felt like she had just been tasered and she straightened up stiffly, “What?” she nearly shouted, before she got a handle on herself and rubbed her forehead where a headache had suddenly started throbbing.

“They’re doing a press and fan thing at the City Convention Centre.  Autographs, photo booth and Q&A with the fans.” It was Lex’s turn to put her head down on her arms on the table with a keen.  Liz reached over and put her hand on her shoulder.

“I won’t go, Liz… I can’t!  I’m just starting to feel normal again.  I can’t go through this again.”

“I know, sweetie,” Liz said, sadness in her voice and on her face.  “Look, this wasn’t advertised, but they’re doing a photoshoot in the park, too.  Tomorrow morning.”

“The Oasis?  Why?” Lex asked, turning her head to look out the window, half expecting to see him walk by, but all she could see was her own reflection, looking panicked.  She forced herself to calm down.

“I don’t know, sweetie.  Dave’s working the security, that’s all I know.”  Liz paused, “Do you want me to come over tomorrow?  We can watch a movie, or we can go shopping in the City… Get away from here.”

Lex turned back to look at her best friend, thankful for her offered comforting presence, but she turned her down, already feeling better as she assimilated the news and just as quickly moved it to a more discreet part of her mind, leaving her able to function normally and she sighed in relief.  They changed the subject easily, and Lex spent the rest of the night with her loved ones as Luke broke out some champagne and they celebrated late into the night.  She didn’t have time to think about him… she had her own life to live.

⚡️


	9. Chapter 9

Lex made her way down the road, the gentle May breeze blowing her loose hair around and carrying the heady scent of lilacs to her nose.  Her stomach was in knots.  She had woken up that morning with the unshakable need to see Jensen again, even if it was just from a distance.  She needed it for closure, she needed to know that she could move on and for that she needed to know, without a shadow of a doubt, that he had moved on too.

As she approached the end of the street, she could see that access to the park had been blocked off and was guarded by the broad-shouldered Dave in a black private security uniform.  Beyond him she could see a few more agents dotting the area, too, amongst the people scrambling around setting up the site.  Lex took another deep breath and headed straight for the glaring Dave. Glancing to the right at the intersection, she could see that part of the cross street had been blocked off from traffic with more barriers and trailers lined up along the edge of the park.  She figured that must be where the stars were being prepped for the photoshoot.

She drew up to Dave who might have looked more intimidating if she didn’t know him so well.  “Traffic must have been a bitch for you this morning,” she teased glancing back at the corner of his house just visible down the other side of the street.

“What are you doing here, Lex?  You know I can’t let you through,” he said.

“I don’t want to go through, Dave.  I’m just here to hang out with you.”

“Liar.”

“Maybe, but you can’t prove it.”

She glanced at the trailers and then into the park wondering if they were still getting ready or if they were already in there.  She smiled when she spotted the black Impala in the middle of a green space surrounded by screens, lights and professional photography gear.  How many times had she imagined that same car driving past the shop, or parked in front of the house.  The park was crawling with people and though she scanned the faces, marvelling at the number of them needed to take a few pictures, she could not see Jensen.

Suddenly, to her right, the door to the first trailer opened and out walked the insanely tall Jared, his eyes peeled on his phone and frowning.  He was wearing black pants and a blue t-shirt and the wind was playing with his hair and he kept absently smoothing it down.  Movement at the trailer’s door caught her attention again and she watched as first his leg and foot and then the rest of his body appeared coming out to stand beside his taller co-star.  He adjusted the blue jean shirt he had on over a black t-shirt and black pants.  Lex’s heart jumped into her throat as he spoke to Jared, his lips moving but the sound not reaching where she was.  Jared raised his hand without looking at him and continued what he was doing on his phone.  Jensen rolled his eyes and turned towards where she and Dave were standing.  His movements stopped, frozen for a micro second, as his eyes connected with hers and she held his stare, unable to breathe she was suddenly so full of expectation and hope.  She deflated like a balloon as he turned back towards Jared without any hint that he had recognized her, much less that he cared.  She dropped her eyes to the ground – she had come there wanting an answer, well, there it was. Lex turned around to go back home.

“Hey,” she heard from behind her.

She turned to find Jensen walking towards her and stopping a little distance away from Dave; he was beyond perfect, all done up for the photoshoot, not a hair out of place.  She tried to swallow the lump in her throat, though her mouth had gone cotton dry.  “Hey,” she answered, glancing behind him as Jared looked up from his phone right at her and then back to Jensen.  Between him and Dave, she felt like they were standing in a massive spotlight.  “Liz told me you might be here today,” she managed to say to explain her presence.

“Um, yeah,” he answered tucking his hands in his pockets and glancing at Dave and then back to her. “Yeah, they decided to do the promo shoot here.  Not my idea.”  He glanced back towards where Jared had been standing, but he was gone.  Lex could tell that he wanted to get back to work.  What was she still doing there? she asked herself.  She had her answer, she should just leave.  “Listen,” he said suddenly, looking behind him, “We’re on a crazy schedule, but…  If you can stick around… There are things I need to say to you.”

Lex could only nod, feeling that showing up there had been a terrible idea, but it was too late to turn back now.  Jensen turned around and gestured that she should follow him.  Her eyes met Dave’s as she walked past him: he was looking more concerned than anything else and she gave him a tight-lipped smile.  They made their way into the park, Jared coming back into view as he looked up from his phone again and tipped his head to the side looking at them.

“There you are!” said a woman suddenly emerging from somewhere off to Lex’s right. “They need you with Jared so they can set the lights.  Would you get your hands out of those pockets?  You’ll mess up the crease again.”

The woman looked at Lex, briefly, but didn’t question her presence, more preoccupied with smoothing Jensen’s outfit.  He pulled his hands out of the pants pockets with a roll of his eyes, “Is it okay if I scratch my butt or will that ruin something too?”  He gave the woman a smile and she threw an annoyed frown at him.

“Only your image, Jensen.  Now get over there.”

He smiled again and walked off to join Jared without a backwards glance at her.  Lex stood awkwardly, not sure where she was supposed to wait, or what she would do if someone questioned her presence there.  He drew up to Jared and his lips were stretched into a smile.  Jared said something she couldn’t hear and Jensen started laughing.  She watched as he worked: Jensen’s smile and laughter as he went about doing his job and interacting with the various people in the park further confirming she had no place there.  He and Jared stood on their marks and horsed around a little bit, then struck various poses around the Impala as the photographer directed them.

He was happy.  He had moved on.  It was time for her to do the same thing.  With a deep breath, she turned away from the photoshoot and made her way back out of the park.  She already knew what Jensen had to say to her, and she didn’t need to hear his rejection.  She had understood.  She thanked Dave on her way past him, not looking back, in order to save whatever dignity she had left, and made her way down the street.

⚡️

Lex sat at the desk in the upstairs office attempting to concentrate on the month end books.  They could have waited, since she wasn’t technically scheduled to work that day, but she needed the distraction.  She reached for her coffee and took a sip while she ran down the list of numbers on her report and entered them into the computer system in a mindless routine she was so used to after six years that she could do it in her sleep.  She had her music playing too and she tried to lose herself in the notes and lyrics; tried to forget the black hole that was the past year of her life.

Someone knocked at the door behind her and she paused her mp3 player before turning around to face whoever it was.  The slim Sean was standing in the doorway.  His hair was a light leaf green in honour of spring, or so he had announced when he showed up with it, a startling change from his previous black.

“Um… Alexa?”

“Sean, you’re supposed to stay downstairs during store hours.”

“Uh… yeah, yeah… I know.  But there’s… a delivery.”

Lex raised her eyebrows at him, feeling thoroughly exasperated, “You’ve been working here for three years Sean, you can handle a freakin’ delivery inventory.  Seriously.”  He glanced back down the stairs and shifted from one foot to the other and Lex found herself wondering what was going on with him.

“Oh! yeah, no I know.  Um… This is a delivery for you though.”

Lex sat back in her chair annoyed.  She glanced down at her outfit.  She hadn’t bothered to change since she wasn’t officially on the clock and she was still wearing her jeans and thin knit shirt over a tank top that she had worn to the park.  She breathed out an annoyed huff and pushed herself to her feet.  Sean suddenly flashed her a big goofy grin before heading back down the stairs ahead of her and she frowned at his barely contained excitement.  What was he up to?

She made her way down the stairs and rounded the corner into the main store section but stopped dead in her tracks as she looked up.  Standing by the counter, outlined in a bright halo by the sunlight streaming in through the glass door, was the tall, broad-shouldered Jensen.  He had changed out of his clothes from the photoshoot and was now dressed in ripped blue jeans and a white cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows.  Sean was standing off to the side watching her with his goofy grin but he ducked into the next section of the store to give them their privacy when she shifted her eyes to him.

She walked up to Jensen, crossing her arms over her chest.  “Hey,” she said, feeling ordinary and unoriginal, but her brain was unable to come up with anything else as she tried to process his sudden appearance in the store.  What could he possibly want?  She thought he would have taken the out she had given him by leaving.

“Hey,” he repeated, watching her closely, the barest hint of a smile tugging at his lips.  “You took off earlier.”

Lex shifted uncomfortably, “Um… yeah.  I didn’t want to be in the way.  I figured it would just be easier… for everyone… if I left.”  She took a deep steadying breath.

“I wish you’d stayed,” he said, and Lex looked up at him, frowning at his easy smile.  “How are you?” he asked.

“Fine,” she said with a shrug, “I guess.  You’ve been doing great with the show… You must be excited that you guys got picked up for a fourth season, it was kinda hard to watch you get all torn up though…  kinda wondering how Dean’ll get out of that one…” Lex shut her mouth, wide-eyed, as she realized she was rambling nervously again.

His smile got wider and her heart gave a painful little thump in her chest, “You’ve been watching the show.”

Lex looked away exasperated, “Well, yeah!  It’s a good show.  But you know that, you and Jared swept up all the awards in your category this year… or so Ty tells me,” she added, closing her eyes, dismayed at her inability to not babble in his presence.  She looked up at him again as his smile slowly slid off his face and his eyebrows settled into a frown, his lips slightly pursed.  Might as well get it over with, put them both out of their misery.  “Jensen, I know why you’re here and it’s okay.  You don’t have to do this.”

“It’s all crap.  All of it.”  Lex frowned confused by his fervent response.  “The awards, the show…  none of it means anything, and I didn’t even realize it, until…”  He paused, biting his lower lip and looking away.  Lex’s heart was pounding.  What did any of this mean?  She realized she was holding her breath and she let it out, waiting for him to continue explaining.  He didn’t go on though.  When he looked back at her his face was back to being calm, “Look, I have to go.  Jared’s holding down the fort at the convention, but I…  I wanted to give you this.”

Lex followed his hand as he raised it and rested it on a small flat package on the counter, about the dimensions of a trade paperback.  It was wrapped in brown paper.  He picked it up and handed it to her.  She unwound her arms and took it from him, looking up at his errant eyes, looking everywhere but at her.  He was looking shy all of a sudden, and none of it was making sense to her.  “What’s this?” she asked him.

“It’s no big deal.  I’ve been keeping it with me for a while now, but… I think you should have it.”  Lex looked down again and reached to tear the wrapping, but he stopped her quickly, “Ah, no…  I mean…  You can open it later.”  She looked up at him and the shadow of a smile that had been lingering on his face was completely gone, replaced by an all too familiar look of anxiety.  He locked stares with her and his voice turned to a soft rasp, “I’m really sorry about the way I acted… last time.  I wanted to call, or come see you, but something always came up for work… and I wasn’t sure you’d ever want to see me again after… how I left.” He paused, looking upset, “I was a complete asshole and I know I don’t deserve your forgiveness, but…  when you showed up this morning…  It gave me the courage to come find you.”

Lex watched him, feeling that subtle electricity under her skin attempting to burst out; that feeling of anticipation making her draw quick breaths as she noticed his fidgeting hands and vulnerable look.  Deserve her forgiveness?  She hadn’t even thought about that.  Why would he want her forgiveness if he had moved on?  She took a breath, trying to get her thoughts in order when suddenly the shop door opened, making the bell ring.  She shifted her gaze sharply to the customer coming in and her eyes widened in disbelief when she recognized the idiot who had tried to buy the Korn CD months back.

“Go away!” she found herself calling out shrilly.  He startled and opened his mouth, but Lex wouldn’t let him speak, “No!  Just go!  Go away!”  The man turned around and let the door close behind him looking confusedly at her through the glass before moving off down the street.  She turned back to look at Jensen and she realized the sudden tingling had dissipated again and she took a fresh look at him, refusing to be duped again by his charm.  It was an act, she reminded herself painfully, while she squeezed the hard gift in her hands.

“I’m leaving today,” he said sadly, “We start filming this week and I have to fly back to Vancouver tonight.”

“Yeah,” Lex said, the disappointment she felt not surprising her, but still painful.  “That’s good.”

“I was wondering…” he said, clearing the shake in his voice and starting again.  “I was hoping that maybe…  If you didn’t hate me… completely.  Maybe… you’d come with me.  Give me another chance…  Make me a happy man, again.”

Lex frowned, her emotions sending her brain in too many directions at once and confusing her utterly.  “You didn’t exactly look unhappy at the park,” she said, narrowing her eyes suspiciously, “You were laughing it up with Jared, having a great time.”

Jensen smiled sadly, huffing disbelievingly then looking back at her with his perfectly white teeth showing through his parted lips and his photoshoot haircut and large green eyes with the sculpted eyebrows and long lashes.  “I’m an actor.  I’d be a pretty useless one if I couldn’t slap on a smile.  Even when I feel broken inside.”

Exactly.  He was an actor.  What was she supposed to believe?  What was real and what was just an act?  She stared at him as he looked back at her apprehensively, like a criminal on trial waiting for his verdict.  Did she forgive him?  Did she tell him to have a nice life?  If she gave him another chance, and things didn’t work out, would she walk away from it again?  How long would it take that time?

Lex took a deep breath, still not sure what would come out when the store phone started ringing.  She shook her head and breathed out in disbelief at life’s interruptions.  She glanced around for Sean, but he was nowhere in sight, keeping to himself.  The phone stopped ringing, and Lex tried again, breathing in to answer him, when the phone started ringing again.

“Oh! For crying out loud!” she exclaimed, walking around him to go in behind the counter.  She picked up the phone receiver.  Turns out it was her sister.  “It’s not a good time Ty, can I call you back?”  Her sister babbled excitedly, but her brain was too busy trying to process everything else going on.  “Seriously, Ty! Not a good time.  I’ll call you back.”  Lex hung up the receiver and looked at the brown paper wrapped package in her hand absently before setting it down on the counter and going back to stand in front of the actor.

“Look, Jensen.  I’m a pretty practical kind of person…  generally speaking anyways.  And I’m not the kind of girl who falls in and out of love at the drop of a hat.  So… for the sake of self-preservation, can I just say… no?  And we’ll leave it at that?”

Lex wasn’t entirely prepared for the stunned look on his face.  She had expected a certain amount of disappointment, which was natural when being turned down, but the pain in his eyes filled her with doubt.  Was her answer really so surprising to him?  Had he actually expected her to forgive and forget, so easily?  Was she really turning him down? she wondered to herself.   

He cleared his throat.  “Uh, yeah.  Of course.  I… I guess…  yeah.  I guess I’ll just go.  It was nice to see you again, Lex.”

He turned away and started to walk out of the store, but God save her, she couldn’t stand seeing him like that.  She shot out her hand and grabbed his wrist pulling him back towards her.  “You gotta understand, I fell… hard… for you,” she said, feeling the agony writhe inside her, “And it took me all this time to even start putting the pieces together again.  And I’m afraid, Jensen.  I’m afraid that if I’m hurt again… if you cast me aside, which I absolutely expect you to do, considering everything…  I just don’t think I could survive it again.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you?” he said, sounding awestruck, “You’re really saying no.”

“You’re a famous TV star, immortalized and elevated to god-like status…  I’m just a nobody from Nowhere.  I’m not meant to be a part of your life.”

She watched him, feeling the tears well up in her eyes and she fought them down.  He looked like he was barely keeping it together himself, as he looked away blinking quickly and pursing his lips.  “I get it,” he said in a rough whisper, “It’s probably for the best.”  He turned around to leave again and this time Lex didn’t stop him; she was moments away from full on water works and she was holding on to her composure desperately.  He reached for the handle of the store’s glass door but didn’t push it open.  He turned back towards her, an ardent look in his eyes.  “You know,” he started softly, “The fame thing…  isn’t really real.  Under all that crap glamour there’s just…” he paused, taking a step towards her, “there’s just a scared little boy… asking the girl he loves,” his voice cracked and Lex’s heart leapt into her throat, “asking her… to love him, too.”

Lex felt like her heart was breaking into a million tiny pieces, but all she could see as she looked at him, was Dean Winchester.  What role was he playing with her now?  She fought against her instinct to take it all back.  She had made her decision.  She had thought about this.  She knew this was the right choice.

Jensen moved up to her, standing as close as he had stood that long ago afternoon when fate had somehow landed them in her hallway and Lex had first felt that electric current under her skin.  All she felt now though was torn sadness and as he bent down towards her, she felt the irrepressible tears wetting her eyes, regardless of her efforts to squelch them.  His lips pressed gently against her cheek, lingering a moment, and the first tear ran down her cheek silently.  He pulled back slightly, but Lex did not turn towards him this time and when it was clear that she wouldn’t, he drew back completely.

“Goodbye, Alexa,” he said and left through the door, disappearing beyond the glass of the front window.

She tried to fight back the tears, wiping away those that had already fallen, and she caught sight of the brown package he had brought her still sitting on the counter.  She moved towards it, desperate for a distraction.  She picked it up again and ripped the wrapper down the front.  What she saw through the tear hit her like a ton of bricks and her brain hiccupped to a full stop.  She reached for the phone, knocking over the display rack of new arrivals in her hurry and she fumbled for the buttons, calling back her sister.

⚡️


	10. Chapter 10

Lex sat on the edge of the same little window table she had sat at with Liz the previous night declaring herself over Jensen, and waited for her friends’ opinions.  After she had hung up with Ty, her sister had called an emergency meeting, getting everyone to rush over to Luke’s closed restaurant.  Lex had just finished telling them what had happened with Jensen, holding on to the now unwrapped gift he had given her.  She looked from Hayden in her jeans and t-shirt, looking more relaxed than she had been in ages, to Liz standing, leaning back against Dave who was still dressed in his guard’s uniform, to Luke standing close to Hayden, his usual stained apron missing from his rotund belly and finally, to her little sister Ty, pacing nervously back and forth while she chewed on her cuticles.

“I think you made the best decision here, Lex,” Liz told her supportively, Dave nodding his agreement.

“If this will make you happy, then good riddance,” he said, after a moment, “Who needs that kind of headache?”

“You don’t give assholes a second chance to hurt you.  You taught me that,” added Ty adamantly.

Hayden was looking at the floor and frowning, and Liz nudged her in the shoulder.  She looked up and agreed with the group, nodding her head.

Lex breathed a sigh of relief.  She had made the right choice after all.  “Good,” she said, “Okay, good.”

No one spoke, letting the quiet settle in the room as they all reflected quietly on the situation.  Suddenly, the door to the restaurant opened and Mackey rushed inside wearing torn, cut off jeans, a child’s t-shirt with a frosted cupcake on it and a sleeveless bright blue knit vest that went down to her knees in the back.

“I’m here! I’m here! What’s the bloody emergency?” she cried out, bending down to catch her breath, clearly she had run from wherever she had been when Ty called her…  Hadn’t she been home?

Ty walked over to her, taking her hand and lacing their fingers together. “Jensen asked Lex to go with him to Vancouver.  She turned him down.”

“She wha…?” Mackey exclaimed much more loudly than anyone expected, the room collectively flinching as they turned to look at her, “What did you do? Are you Gert and Daisy?”

“What?” everyone reacted simultaneously except for Ty who somehow seemed to understand perfectly.

“She means crazy; daisy… crazy… it rhymes,” she explained dismissively before turning towards Mackey and leaning into her side, “But, you’re wrong, sweet pea.  It’s actually really smart.  She has good reasons.”

Lex frowned watching her sister trying to explain her decision to Mackey, starting to wonder if it did make sense after all, doubt creeping in at the edges.

Dave cleared his throat, drawing her attention to him, “Did he take that picture?” he asked.

Lex nodded, looking down at the framed 5”x7” photograph she was holding in her hands.  It was the moonlit candid he had snapped that night when they were in the park: the curves of her nose and cheek looked like they were glowing from the gentle light of the moon, her eyes were closed and a small smile tugged at her lips, the rest of the photo was nearly black in contrast.  It had an ephemeral feel to it, like he had captured an angel on film.  Even if it was a picture of her, she couldn’t deny that it was an absolutely stunning photograph.

“And… you said he’s been keeping it with him?” Liz asked tentatively.  Lex nodded again feeling more and more confused.  What had happened to her rock-hard certainty from just a few minutes before?

“And he said he wanted to be with you?  Like… _with_ you?  In Vancouver?” asked Hayden. Lex bit her lips nervously and nodded again, her words locked away in her throat.  “Oh!  That’s nice, right?  I mean, _anyone_ who says they want to be with you must be… pretty nice… I imagine,” she finished, a slightly sour tone creeping into her voice.

Lex huffed out a sad chuckle, her lips curling up at the corners as she looked at the picture again.  “You know, it was actually pretty sweet.  I mean, yeah, he’s an actor and we know he can deliver an emotional line, but… he said that under all the fame, he was just a scared little boy, asking the girl he loved… to love him.”

Lex trailed off into silence, the entire room just staring at her, wide-eyed and stunned.  She looked down at the picture again and his words echoed in her head once more.  She remembered talking to him about her own photography and how he had been able to feel what she had felt taking the snowy picture.  What was this picture telling her about the state of mind of the photographer when he took it?  “Oh God!  I made the wrong choice, didn’t I?”

“No shit, Sherlock!” exclaimed Mackey loudly.

“What do I do?” Lex asked, in a near panic.  “He’s leaving tonight!  Right after the convention!  How am I supposed to get to him?”

The room erupted in a hive of activity, brainstorming what she could possibly do while everyone stood up or sat down or paced with no clear direction.

“We have to get you to that convention… We don’t know which hotel he’s staying in!  The convention is the only way to guarantee you see him,” said Dave.

“Ok, but how do I get in?” Lex asked, looking all around them her panic rising the more she thought about how stupid she had been.

“Oh my God!” Ty suddenly exclaimed, turning to smack Mackey on the shoulder.  The tall blonde just looked at her, completely confused.  “Mackey!  You can totally get her in!”

Everyone in the room stopped and turned to stare at the heretofore useless roommate of Lex’s.

“I can?” she said, looking absolutely lost.  Ty pulled something out of her girlfriend’s vest pocket and waved it in front of her face.  “Why are you… Oh!  Lexie!  I have my press pass!  We can go in together!”

Lex didn’t have time to wonder why Mackey would have a press pass as Hayden declared that she could drive them, her car was parked out front.  Everyone rushed out to the pavement, leaving Luke behind to close up the restaurant again, and Hayden unlocked the doors and climbed in the driver’s seat while Lex practically threw herself into the passenger seat.  Mackey and Ty got into the back and suddenly found themselves squeezed when Liz and Dave also piled in refusing to be left behind regardless of Mackey’s exclamation that she couldn’t get everybody in.

Hayden navigated the circuitous one-way streets of Nowhere Ville in order to get them back into the East End of the City while Lex stressed about what she could possibly say to Jensen after her absolutely idiotic mistake.  What had she been thinking?  She could only plead temporary insanity and hope he forgave her.

After a harrowing ride through the City streets – Hayden barely paying attention to stop signs, intersection lights, pedestrians or any of the usual driving concerns while everyone in the back seat gave their opinion about the best way to get to the Convention Centre, and finishing with Hayden slamming the breaks in the middle of a busy intersection yelling at everyone to shut up – they pulled up, in one piece, to the curb in front of their destination.  Lex jumped out of the car right away followed by Mackey and Ty who were the fastest out of the backseat.  Liz called out for them to go ahead and they would be right behind them.

Mackey took the lead through the doors, Ty and Lex following in the wake of her billowing vest as she waved her press pass at every checkpoint and gained access to the main convention floor easily for herself and the two sisters.  The main area looked mostly empty, only a few volunteers moving around guiding the scattered convention goers to the various sections of the event: the Q&A room, the photo booth and the autograph podium where some of the actors were available.

“Ty,” Lex found herself asking, distracted from her concerns after the third convention official allowed them to pass with reverence in his eyes and no questions at all.  “Why do I feel like I’m following royalty?”

“Mackey is actually really well known in the press world.  She writes this super successful blog that talks about a whole bunch of things, she tells stories using current events and uses them to express her opinions.  What did you think she was doing all this time locked away in her room all day?”

“She’s a writer?” asked Lex, completely shocked.

“Yeah!  She’s got a publishing deal in the works too for one of her blog posts and everything.  She’s pretty excited about it, I’m surprised she never told you.”

Lex was suddenly seeing her roommate in a completely different light, her late nights and sleeping all day turning into information gathering and actual work, her eccentric style just a part of her public persona.  “I honestly feel like the Mackey you know is completely different from the one I’ve been living with.”

Ty answered something, but her mind blotted her out completely as they approached closed double doors that were labelled “Q&A”.  She didn’t have time to worry about what she would do or say anymore, faced with the solid wood panels and knowing who she would find beyond them.  She took a few deep breaths and Ty pulled open the door.

The room was set up with rows and rows of chairs all facing in the same direction, though her view was blocked by people standing along the edges of the aisle.  She could hear, though her brain fog made it sound like the teacher in Charlie Brown, a man’s voice amplified by the speakers around the room.  There were no seats left, crowds of people standing along the back and down the side aisles.  The atmosphere in the room was stifling, the air conditioning unable to keep up with the radiating collective body heat of the sheer number of people in the room.

Mackey tapped her shoulder and pointed down the aisle, indicating where people were standing, watching the main event.  She gave her an encouraging push and Lex started down towards the front of the room.  As she moved through the tightly packed people, she caught glimpses of the raised stage on which Jared and Jensen were standing in front of microphones.  The bubble that was surrounding her head finally seemed to burst as her eyes landed on Jensen, standing in the middle of the stage with a microphone in his hand.  He was looking off to the side, lost in thought, a slight smile on his face that couldn’t quite reach his eyes.  Her heart ached for him and she wanted nothing more than to run to him and take him in her arms again.

The room erupted in a round of claps and cheers, startling her and she looked around again, feeling lost in the sea of raised hands.  Jared was standing tall and shifting from foot to foot as he looked around the room at all the people, a microphone of his own in his hand.  He pointed to someone in the crowd.  “How ‘bout you… yeah, right there.”

Lex turned her head towards where Jared had pointed as a new voice came out through the speakers. “So, my question is for both of you.”

“Yeah?” prompted Jared on stage and she spotted the girl who was standing in the crowd, a stage hand holding a microphone towards her.

“Okay, so my question is…  You’re both young, handsome and reportedly unattached…” the girl’s voice wavered a little bit and the crowd burst out excitedly again as she laughed shyly.  “I’m sure everyone is curious if there’s maybe someone special you have your eyes on?”

Lex felt her stomach drop into her shoes at the invasive question and she couldn’t stop herself glancing at Jensen whose smile slid off his face and he looked crestfallen.  Her heart pinched: she had caused that pain.  Jared laughed into the microphone looking a little bashful as he answered, his smile still firmly anchored to his lips.  “Um… no.  Not at the moment.  We’ve yet to find anyone willing to put up with our grossly deformed faces.  Well… Jensen’s face is deformed… mine’s perfect, of course.”  He shook his head, flipping his hair dramatically to the general approval of the crowd who was back to cheering.

“Yeah, yeah…” said Jensen, half-heartedly into his microphone, his plastic smile back in place as he turned to look at Jared, “Laugh it up, jackass.”

Jared laughed harder still and directed his gaze around the audience who were back to reaching their hands in the air like a classroom full of Hermiones.  Lex suddenly remembered why she was there, and she looked around trying to find a way to let Jensen know she was there without disrupting the event.  She looked down towards the stage and figured if she could get close enough, she could get his attention as he and Jared left at the end.  She went back to trying to ford a path through the packed crowd, heading towards the front.  Her progress was stopped though, held back a good distance from the stage area by stanchions.  Jared picked another person from the room and the microphone holding attendant made her way over to the teenage boy.

“Hi Jared, Hi Jensen, I’m Kyle” he said with a slight quaver.  The men on the stage greeted him back and he continued with his question, “So, I noticed that you tease each other a lot in interviews and on set…  Is that something you do to stay in character?”

Jared laughed again, while Jensen shifted from one foot to the other, looking slightly impatient.  “Actually, Jensen and I are pretty lucky.  We got along right from the start, both being Texas boys, and liking football, and all.  So, it’s pretty easy to play brothers on screen, because it’s almost like we’re brothers in real life.  Right, jerk?” Jared finished, to the sound of the audience’s collected “aws” and turning towards Jensen who raised the mic to his mouth and muttered, “bitch,” into it to the general ruckus of the crowd reacting to the Winchester brothers’ pet names for each other.

Jared looked back out towards the audience where the hands shot up again.  She watched as he scanned the crowd, his eyes looking out towards her side of the room and almost like it had a mind of its own, her arm stretched up in the air.  Somehow his eyes found her and a spark of recognition flashed in his eyes as he pointed right to her, directing the stage hand to where she was standing.

Lex’s stomach was a mess of fluttering butterflies as she gazed around at the gathered crowd, there had to be at least five hundred people there, if not more.  She just caught the rest of her friends standing by the door where she, Ty and Mackey had come in giving her thumbs up, Ty barely containing her excitement again as she jumped up and down on the balls of her feet.  Lex turned back towards the stage where Jared was smiling at her.  Her palms were suddenly sweaty as the stage hand reached her and stuck the microphone head right in her face.  She could feel her whole body shaking slightly, like there was current running through her and into the ground, connecting her to the auspicious moment in a way she could not stop, even if she wanted to.  She glanced at Jensen who hadn’t looked up yet in the interminable seconds since Jared had picked her and she remembered that he suffered from stage fright, and yet there he was.

Lex’s heart swelled, anticipating the moment he would look up and see her, certain that when he would, everything would work out like it was supposed to.  “My question is for Jensen…” she started and he barely acknowledged her with a nod of his head.  She pushed on though, drawing from the show to try and sound like just any other fan, “So… um… in an episode a few weeks back, Sam and Dean were fighting a monster that lured people to their death by impersonating loved ones…” Jensen’s head stopped bobbing and he frowned looking up slowly at the audience, “Um…  In the episode Dean falls for the creature’s tricks and nearly gets himself killed...  He made a mistake because he was scared.”  His eyes finally found hers and they widened in surprise.  She smiled at him, feeling her heart fill with happiness, though doubt still lingered, as she wondered how he would react to her airing their laundry so publicly. “What if someone was scared… and because she was scared, she thought, for a while, that she’d be better off without… you…”  The people in the audience had been completely quiet up until then, but she could sense a shift, like a quiet rustle as some of the people looked around trying to see who was talking.  The stage hand, looked at her and gestured for her to get on with it.  Lex looked back up to Jensen.  “Would you be able to forgive her?”

He was staring at her transfixed and she saw his lips move, but she couldn’t hear him from where she was.  Jared glanced at Jensen and pushed his mic up to his face with a shake of his head, drawing laughter from the crowd again as he started again.  “Yes,” he said so she could hear, “I think so.”

Lex’s heart beat harder, “And what if…”

“Sorry, you only get one question,” interrupted the stage hand as she moved the mic away from her and headed back out towards the audience where some hands were tentatively going up again but still a good portion was whispering and craning their necks to try and see who had asked the last question.

Then, Jensen spoke up quickly, “No, it’s okay.  I don’t think she was done.”  The woman holding the microphone made her way back to her looking annoyed and stood to the side again holding up the mic.  “You were saying?” Jensen encouraged her.

Lex took another deep breath, feeling her nerves steadying as he looked at her so expectantly.  “What if, you had met someone, and you asked her to be with you,” more agitated whispers from the crowd, “and, say, this girl was insane and said no…  but then she realized…  She realized, that… she was just a girl, standing in front of a boy, too terrified to say what was in her heart… could you forgive her, then?”

The whole room felt like the air had been sucked out by the collective breath being held by everyone in the audience as they watched what could possibly be fandom history in the making.  Lex couldn’t look away from Jensen who was staring right back at her.  It felt like forever before he raised the mic again to answer her, “Is she still too terrified to say what’s in her heart?”

Lex wanted to shout it out she was full to bursting with the emotion, and she realized, she had been since the day she had met him, standing across the counter from her, buying Pink Floyd records.  “I love you, Jensen… so completely that it scares me… but not as much as the idea of never seeing you again.”

The energy in the room felt like it had no idea where to go as whispers turned to chatter and the people closest to her turned to stare at her openly, people further off standing to get a better look.  The stage hand was probably the one looking most confused, unsure what to do as she stood in front of her and to the side, her eyes wide.  Jared’s head was twisting around between her and Jensen, just watching them as they stared at each other, both frozen to the spot.  He finally turned to Jensen and raised his mic to his grinning mouth.  “So… Jensen,” he said, startling his co-star slightly who turned towards him as he went on, his smile getting goofier by the second. “Is there a special someone after all?” he asked innocently.

Instead of answering, Jensen let the mic fall from his hand, the thunk and feedback loud in the speaker for an instant before cutting out, and the audience got to their feet collectively, training their cameras on him as he jumped from the stage and headed straight for her.  She ducked under the stanchion ribbon and met him halfway running into his arms.  He lifted her right off her feet in his enthusiasm as she wrapped her own arms around his neck and his mouth crashed against hers.  Around them, the crowd exploded into a roar and all that energy felt like it was being soaked up by her skin, her body barely containing it as she kissed him without reservation, the flashes of all the cameras like a thousand blinking stars trapped in the room with them.

Lex didn’t care.  She was far too happy to worry about it.  She was going to be with him, they were going to be together, just like she had been yearning for every day they had been apart.  In that perfect moment, she saw their future together flashing through her mind’s eye, the pieces falling into place in a way she had never felt so sure about ever before.  She saw the galas and conventions they would attend together, working through his anxiety issues.  She would visit the set often just to lay a kiss on his cheek.  She saw them surrounded by friends and family at their glorious wedding.  They would have simple meals together and whirlwind nights on the town.  And the last prophetic vision lingered in her mind most vividly: her arms holding a smiling baby boy, his daddy’s green eyes looking back at her, shining with joy as he giggled, tickled by Jensen’s tender kiss on his tiny forehead.

Lightning had struck her most definitely, and devastated her so completely leaving behind nothing but happiness.

⚡️


End file.
